twelve

Allow me to prepare you for disappointment.  I didn’t get far with this activity.  In my opinion, I didn’t go anywhere at all. 

This is all so ironic since this was actually an activity I was excited about.  When I learned we would be processing text from images, my mind immediately jumped to the infinite number of things I could do – create a typewritten of the notes I’d accumulated over the years, decipher the chicken scratch of most doctors, etc. etc.  That was a happier, simpler time, before I knew that the actual  implementation would make me want to throw dreams out the window.

Shown below is a document that an unidentified person with semi-illegible handwriting prepared.  The white spaces at the corners are present because of the rotation that the original image underwent to make the horizontal lines appear horizontal. 

Figure 1. Rotated image of a form that was filled out with handwriting. 

The handwritten text that I wanted to extract are shown below along with, what I can say, is the best I can do.  I’m not sure if it’s what I’m supposed to see or if I’m half there or nowhere near there. 

Figure 2.  Handwritten text to be processed.

Figure 3.  Results of the processing on the handwritten text.

So, I’ll just say what I did.  I binarized the image and removed the horizontal line using a mask.  Maybe the horizontal lines are too thick or maybe the mask I used was wrong.  Either way, I’ve spent too long on this activity.  A real scientist must know when something is beyond their capabilities.

I am aware that I gave up on this activity and that it’s late so I’m just giving myself a measly 7/10.

Sigh.

REFERENCES:
1. A12 – Preprocessing Text – Applied Physics 186 Manual.