METHODS FOR MOBILE IMAGE CAPTURE OF VEHICLE IDENTIFICATION NUMBERS

• US 20140270384A1
• Filed: 03/17/2014
• Published: 09/18/2014
• Est. Priority Date: 03/15/2013
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: Mitek Systems Incorporated
• Original Assignee: Mitek Systems Incorporated
• Inventors: Nepomniachtchi, Grigori, Kotovich, Nikolay
• Application Number:
  US14/217,336
• Publication Number:
  US 20140270384A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 382/104
• CPC Class Codes: G06V 10/22 by selection of a specific region containing or referencing a pattern; Locating or processing of specific regions to guide the detection or recognition
• CPC Class Codes: G06V 10/28 Quantising the image, e.g. histogram thresholding for discrimination between background and foreground patterns
• CPC Class Codes: G06V 10/98 Detection or correction of errors, e.g. by rescanning the pattern or by human intervention; Evaluation of the quality of the acquired patterns
• CPC Class Codes: G06V 30/153 using recognition of characters or words
• CPC Class Codes: G06V 30/274 Syntactic or semantic context, e.g. balancing
• CPC Class Codes: G06V 30/40 Document-oriented image-based pattern recognition

Abstract

Various embodiments disclosed herein are directed to methods of capturing Vehicle Identification Numbers (VIN) from images captured by a mobile device. Capturing VIN data can be useful in several applications, for example, insurance data capture applications. There are at least two types of images supported by this technology: (1) images of documents and (2) images of non-documents.

Claims

1. A computer readable medium containing instructions which, when executed by a computer, perform a process comprising:

receiving an image which includes a vehicle identification number (VIN);

preprocessing the image in preparation for data extraction;

identifying a first value of the VIN from the preprocessed image;

verifying the first value of the VIN using a redundancy test;

performing an optical character recognition step to extract a second value of the VIN and comparing the first value with the second value to determine if there is a match; and

outputting a confirmed VIN value.

2. The computer readable medium of claim 1, wherein preprocessing the image includes at least on of:

framing the image, cropping the image, binarizing the image, and performing geometric correction on the image.

3. The computer readable medium of claim 1, wherein the redundancy test includes a mod 11 rule test.

4. The computer readable medium of claim 1, wherein the first value of the VIN is identified using a keyword-based search.

5. The computer readable medium of claim 1, wherein the first value of the VIN is identified using a format-based search.

6. The computer readable medium of claim 1, wherein preprocessing comprises generating bitonal snippets of the image.

7. The computer readable medium of claim 1, wherein the optical character recognition is performed using multiple optical character recognition engines.

8. A system for identifying a field in an image of a document, comprising:

a memory configured to store the image; and

a processor coupled with the memory, the processor configured to;

preprocess the image in preparation for data extraction;

identify a first value of the VIN from the preprocessed image;

verify the first value of the VIN using a redundancy test;

perform an optical character recognition step to extract a second value of the VIN and compare the first value with the second value to determine if there is a match; and

output a confirmed VIN value.

9. The system of claim 8, further comprising a network interface module configured to receive an image which includes a vehicle identification number (VIN);

10. The system of claim 8, wherein preprocessing the image includes at least on of:

framing the image, cropping the image, binarizing the image, and performing geometric correction on the image.

11. The system of claim 8, wherein the redundancy test includes a mod 11 rule test.

12. The system of claim 8, wherein the first value of the VIN is identified using a keyword-based search.

13. The system of claim 8, wherein the first value of the VIN is identified using a format-based search.

14. The system of claim 8, wherein preprocessing comprises generating bitonal snippets of the image.

15. The system of claim 8, wherein the optical character recognition is performed using multiple optical character recognition engines.

16. A method for identifying a field in an image of a document, comprising:

receiving an image which includes a vehicle identification number (VIN);

preprocessing the image in preparation for data extraction;

identifying a first value of the VIN from the preprocessed image;

verifying the first value of the VIN using a redundancy test;

performing an optical character recognition step to extract a second value of the VIN and comparing the first value with the second value to determine if there is a match; and

outputting a confirmed VIN value.

17. The method of claim 16, wherein preprocessing the image includes at least on of:

framing the image, cropping the image, binarizing the image, and performing geometric correction on the image.

18. The method of claim 16, wherein the redundancy test includes a mod 11 rule test.

19. The method of claim 16, wherein the first value of the VIN is identified using a keyword-based search.

20. The method of claim 16, wherein the first value of the VIN is identified using a format-based search.

21. The method of claim 16, wherein preprocessing comprises generating bitonal snippets of the image.

22. The method of claim 16, wherein the optical character recognition is performed using multiple optical character recognition engines.