OCR in Indian Scripts: A Survey

Abstract

India is a multi-lingual country. A significantly large number of scripts are used to represent these languages. A desire of vision researchers is to develop an integrated Optical Character Recognition (OCR) system which will be able to process all such scripts. Such a development, if objectified, will not only enable faster flow of information across the country, but also have a profound impact on its scientific and economic development. Courageous endeavors have been successfully made towards the development of a system capable of recognizing machine-printed, or hand-written characters and/or numerals. However, most Indian scripts do not have an integrated OCR system. Further the development of a unified system which is capable of processing all Indian scripts is still a dream. This article presents a survey of the current literature on the development of OCR's in Indian scripts. Reviewing the basics of and the motivation towards the development of OCR system, the article analyzes the various methodologies employed in general purpose pattern recognition system. A critical analysis of the work towards OCR system in Indian languages, with pointers towards possible future work is also presented.