METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR PROCESSING CONTENT WRITTEN IN AN APPLICATION FORM USING AN E-PEN

• US 20140044357A1
• Filed: 10/18/2013
• Published: 02/13/2014
• Est. Priority Date: 04/18/2011
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Jeswill Hitech Solutions Pvt., Ltd.
• Original Assignee: Jeswill Hitech Solutions Pvt., Ltd.
• Inventors: Moorthy, Parthasarathy Srinivasa, Reddy, Pailla Balakrishna
• Granted Patent: US 9,229,544 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 382/188
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/03545 Pens or stylus
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/174 Form filling; Merging
• CPC Class Codes: G06V 30/1423 the instrument generating sequences of position coordinates corresponding to handwriting preprocessing or recognising digital ink G06V30/32
• CPC Class Codes: G06V 30/414 Extracting the geometrical structure, e.g. layout tree; Block segmentation, e.g. bounding boxes for graphics or text

Abstract

A method and apparatus process content written in an application form. In one embodiment, stroke data corresponding to content written in fields of an application form is obtained from an e-pen. Then, words corresponding to the written content are extracted from the stroke data and confidence value is assigned to each of the words with respect to each of fields in the template application form. Each of the words corresponding to the written content is mapped to one of the fields in the template application form based on the confidence value assigned to each of the words. Moreover, a tag is assigned to each of the words indicating a mapping between each of the words and one of the fields, and the words along with the assigned tags are stored in the storage unit.

Claims

1. A computer implemented method for processing content written in an application form by an electronic pen (e-pen), comprising:

obtaining stroke data corresponding to content written in a plurality of fields of an application form;

extracting words corresponding to the written content from the obtained stroke data;

computing distance between each of the words and a plurality of fields of a template application form;

assigning a confidence value to each of the words with respect to each of the plurality of fields based on the distance between each of the words and the plurality of the template application form;

computing distance between the extracted words corresponding to the written content;

mapping each of the words to one of the plurality of fields based on the confidence value assigned to each of the words, distance between the plurality of fields of a template application form and the distance between the extracted words; and

storing each of the words mapped to said corresponding one of the plurality of the fields in a database.

2. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

correcting position errors in the obtained stroke data using a trained data set.

3. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

computing a skew angle associated with the obtained stroke data; and

correcting skew errors associated with the obtained stroke data based on the computed skew angle.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein storing said each of the words mapped to said corresponding one of the plurality of the fields in the database comprises:

assigning a tag to each of the words mapped to the one of the plurality of fields, wherein the tag indicates a mapping between each of the words and one of the plurality of fields to which said each of the words belongs; and

storing the each of words and the assigned tag in the database.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein mapping each of the words to one of the plurality of fields comprises:

computing a score for each of the words based on the distance between the words and the distance between the plurality of fields; and

recomputing confidence value corresponding to one or more words which are incorrectly mapped to the fields of the template application form based on the respective score; and

mapping the incorrectly mapped words to appropriate fields based on the recomputed confidence value, the distance between the fields and the distance between the words.

6. An apparatus comprising:

a processor; and

memory coupled to the processor, wherein the memory includes a form processing module comprising a mapping module configured for;

extracting words from stroke data obtained from an electronic pen (e-pen), wherein the stroke data corresponds to content written in fields of application form;

computing distance between each of the words and a plurality of fields of a template application form;

assigning a confidence value to each of the words with respect to each of the plurality of fields based on the distance between each of the words and the plurality of fields of the template application form;

computing distance between the extracted words corresponding to the written content;

mapping each of the words to one of the plurality of fields based on the confidence value assigned to each of the words, distance between a plurality of fields of a template application form and the distance between the extracted words; and

storing each of the words mapped to the one of the plurality of the fields.

7. The apparatus of claim 6, wherein the form processing module comprises a position correction module configured for correcting position errors in the obtained stroke data using a trained data set.

8. The apparatus of claim 6, wherein the form processing module comprises a skew correction module configured for:

computing a skew angle associated with the obtained stroke data; and

correcting skew errors associated with the obtained stroke data based on the computed skew angle.

9. The apparatus of claim 6, wherein the mapping module is operable for:

assigning a tag to each of the words mapped to the one of the plurality of fields, wherein the tag indicates a mapping between each of the words and one of the plurality of fields to which said each of the words belongs; and

storing the each of words and the assigned tag in a storage unit.

10. The apparatus of claim 6, wherein the mapping module is configured for:

computing a score for each of the words based on the distance between the words and the distance between the plurality of fields; and

recomputing confidence value corresponding to one or more words which are incorrectly mapped to the fields of the template application form based on the respective score; and

mapping the incorrectly mapped words to appropriate fields based on the recomputed confidence value, the distance between the fields and the distance between the words.