Patent · US Expired

System and method for OCR assisted bar code decoding

US5880451A · kind A · utility

129Cited by
11References
22Claims
0Family size

Assignee

Inventors

Key dates

Filing dateApr 24, 1997
Grant dateMar 9, 1999
Priority date
Expiry dateApr 24, 2017

Classification

  • Technology area (CPC G)Physics
  • CPC primaryG06V10/98
  • WIPO fieldComputer technology
  • WIPO sectorElectrical engineering

Abstract

A system for using OCR processing to read human readable characters that correspond to an unsuccessfully decoded code word in a bar code symbol. An imaging system captures an image of a label that includes a bar code symbol and corresponding human readable characters. The system attempts to decode the bar code symbol by decoding each of the constituent bar code characters. If a bar code characters is not successfully decoded, the system locates the associated human readable text and segments the text into individual character images. The unsuccessfully decoded bar code character is mapped to one or more of the alphanumeric character images, which are converted into text characters. The resulting ASCII data is used to create a substitute bar code character in the bar code symbology. After the bar code symbol is decoded using the substitute bar code character, the symbol is validated through check summing or other means.

Source: USPTO / EPO open patent data. Objective bibliographic and citation counts.