Forms Processing API Tutorial: Recognize and Process a Form

Automate your data entry problems away with a state-of-the-art forms processing API. Whether you’re working with customer surveys, tax documents, or billing records every industry uses forms daily to conduct business. Moving data from a paper to a digital medium can be a time consuming hassle. That’s why LEADTOOLS has developed exclusive capabilities that extract text from images containing any combination of machine-printed text, handwritten text, MICR, MRZ, and OMR fields. LEADTOOLS will automatically detect and recognize everything! Below are the main steps to quickly and accurately process various form types regardless of how the data is formatted.

First, we need to initialize the forms engine. This does all the hard work of reading and recognizing the data:

static void InitFormsEngines() 
{ 
Console.WriteLine("Initializing Engines"); 
codecs = new RasterCodecs(); 
recognitionEngine = new FormRecognitionEngine(); 
processingEngine = new FormProcessingEngine(); 
formsOCREngine = OcrEngineManager.CreateEngine(OcrEngineType.LEAD); 
formsOCREngine.Startup(codecs, null, null, @"C:\LEADTOOLS21\Bin\Common\OcrLEADRuntime"); 
OcrObjectsManager ocrObjectsManager = new OcrObjectsManager(formsOCREngine); 
ocrObjectsManager.Engine = formsOCREngine; 
recognitionEngine.ObjectsManagers.Add(ocrObjectsManager); 

Console.WriteLine("Engines initialized successfully"); 
}   

Forms recognition requires a master form and a filled form. A master form contains blank fields and serves as a template to specify zones. A filled form is a one that contains data in the fields.

The next step is to specify the master forms:

private static void CreateMasterFormAttributes() 
{ 
Console.WriteLine("Processing Master Form"); 
string[] masterFileNames = Directory.GetFiles(@"C:\LEADTOOLS21\Resources\Images\Forms\MasterForm Sets\OCR", "*.tif", SearchOption.AllDirectories); 

foreach (string masterFileName in masterFileNames) 
{ 
string formName = Path.GetFileNameWithoutExtension(masterFileName); 
using (RasterImage image = codecs.Load(masterFileName, 0, CodecsLoadByteOrder.BgrOrGray, 1, -1)) 
{ 
FormRecognitionAttributes masterFormAttributes = recognitionEngine.CreateMasterForm(formName, Guid.Empty, null); 
for (int i = 0; i < image.PageCount; i++) 
{ 
image.Page = i + 1; 
recognitionEngine.AddMasterFormPage(masterFormAttributes, image, null); 
} 
recognitionEngine.CloseMasterForm(masterFormAttributes); 
File.WriteAllBytes(formName + ".bin", masterFormAttributes.GetData()); 
} 
} 
Console.WriteLine("Master Form Processing Complete"); 
Console.WriteLine("============================================================="); 
}   

Finally, we’re ready to read the filled forms:

private static void RecognizeForm()
{
Console.WriteLine("Recognizing Form\n");
var GetProjectDirectory = Path.GetDirectoryName(System.Reflection.Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().Location);
string formToRecognize = @"C:\LEADTOOLS21\Resources\Images\Forms\Forms to be Recognized\OCR\W9_OCR_Filled.tif";
using (RasterImage image = codecs.Load(formToRecognize, 0, CodecsLoadByteOrder.BgrOrGray, 1, -1))
{
FormRecognitionAttributes filledFormAttributes = recognitionEngine.CreateForm(null);

for (int i = 0; i < image.PageCount; i++)
{
image.Page = i + 1;
recognitionEngine.AddFormPage(filledFormAttributes, image, null);
}
recognitionEngine.CloseForm(filledFormAttributes);

string resultMessage = "The form could not be recognized";
string[] masterFileNames = Directory.GetFiles(GetProjectDirectory, "*.bin");

foreach (string masterFileName in masterFileNames)
{
string fieldsfName = Path.GetFileNameWithoutExtension(masterFileName) + ".xml";
string fieldsfullPath = Path.Combine(@"C:\LEADTOOLS21\Resources\Images\Forms\MasterForm Sets\OCR", fieldsfName);
processingEngine.LoadFields(fieldsfullPath);
FormRecognitionAttributes masterFormAttributes = new FormRecognitionAttributes();
masterFormAttributes.SetData(File.ReadAllBytes(masterFileName));
FormRecognitionResult recognitionResult = recognitionEngine.CompareForm(masterFormAttributes, filledFormAttributes, null);
if (recognitionResult.Confidence >= 80)
{
List<PageAlignment> alignment = new List<PageAlignment>();
for (int k = 0; k < recognitionResult.PageResults.Count; k++)
alignment.Add(recognitionResult.PageResults[k].Alignment);

resultMessage = $"This form has been recognized as a {Path.GetFileNameWithoutExtension(masterFileName)}";
ProcessForm(image, alignment);
break;
}
}

Console.WriteLine(resultMessage, "Recognition Results");
Console.WriteLine("=============================================================\n");
}
}

private static void ProcessForm(RasterImage image, List<PageAlignment> alignment)
{
processingEngine.OcrEngine = formsOCREngine;
string resultsMessage = string.Empty;

processingEngine.Process(image, alignment);
foreach (FormPage formPage in processingEngine.Pages)
foreach (FormField field in formPage)
if (field != null)
resultsMessage = $"{resultsMessage}{field.Name} = {(field.Result as TextFormFieldResult).Text}\n";

if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(resultsMessage))
Console.WriteLine("No fields were processed", "FieldProcessing Results");
else
Console.WriteLine(resultsMessage, "Field ProcessingResults");
} 

There you have it! This is all that’s needed to extract data from filled forms. For a more in depth look, refer to the tutorial on how to recognize and process a form.

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2 Responses to Forms Processing API Tutorial: Recognize and Process a Form

  1. Steven Root says:

    Zac … looking to perform OCR on Leadtools data stored in Leadtools proprietary format in stored in a DB blob. W/O much background information … if Leadtools can directly OCR the blob w/o converting anything, that would seem the most efficient way to go (by X factor).

    Can Leadtools do that?

    If so … can we chat about batch processing of that OCR and performance.

  2. Hadi says:

    Hey Steven,

    You can achieve this by using the Document SDK. Specifically the LEADDocument and DocumentFactory.LoadFromUri method.

    Relevant links to the documentation:
    https://www.leadtools.com/help/sdk/v21/dh/dox/leaddocument.html
    https://www.leadtools.com/help/sdk/v21/dh/dox/documentfactory-loadfromuri.html

    Here is a code snippet to achieve your purpose:

    using (var ocrEngine = OcrEngineManager.CreateEngine(OcrEngineType.LEAD))
    {
       ocrEngine.Startup(null, null, null, null);
       var urlToBlob = new Uri("https://app.blob.core.windows.net/app/00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000");
       using (var document = DocumentFactory.LoadFromUri(urlToBlob, new LoadDocumentOptions()))
       {
          document.Text.OcrEngine = ocrEngine;
          foreach(var page in document.Pages)
          {
             Console.WriteLine($"Getting text for page {page.PageNumber}...");
             var text = page.GetText();
             Console.WriteLine(text);
          }
       }
    }

    If you’d like to discuss batch processing of OCR and performance, feel free to email me directly at hadi.chami@leadtools.com or come into our live chat M-F 8:30am-6:00pm EST: https://www.leadtools.com/support/chat

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