OCR

Short for Optical Character Recognition or Optical Character Reader, OCR is the process where images of letters can be entered into the computer as data using a scanner or other hardware device. OCR is far from perfect, but is currently the best method of digitizing typed pages of text. Some computer fax applications also use OCR to transform incoming faxes from graphics files into word processing documents.

Some examples of how an OCR may be used would be a company that has hard copies of manuals or other company information and wanting to convert them into data that can be easily accessed and stored. Another example is companies and libraries taking copies of books, magazines, or other old printed material and using an OCR to scan it into computers.

Also see: AAS, Hand recognition, Pattern recognition, ReCAPTCHA, Scanner definitions, TET