Strategies for the automatic interpretation of handwritten addresses

Richard M. Rovner; Andrew M. Gillies; Margaret J. Ganzberger; Daniel J. Hepp

doi:10.1117/12.169468

25 February 1994 Strategies for the automatic interpretation of handwritten addresses

Richard M. Rovner, Andrew M. Gillies, Margaret J. Ganzberger, Daniel J. Hepp

Proceedings Volume 2103, 22nd AIPR Workshop: Interdisciplinary Computer Vision: Applications and Changing Needs; (1994) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.169468
Event: 22nd Applied Imagery Pattern Recognition Workshop, 1993, Washington, DC, United States

Abstract

This paper describes the technologies and strategies underlying a state-of-the-art system for automatic handwritten address interpretation. The system is capable of interpreting both street addresses and post office box addresses. The input to the system is a grayscale image of a handwritten address and the goal is to determine the ZIP+4 code corresponding to the destination address on the mail piece. Processing is accomplished through an integrated series of steps involving preprocessing, numeral field recognition (ZIP codes, street numbers, post office box numbers), national postal database retrieval, word and phrase recognition, database record matching, and a decision strategy. In a formal test, this system encoded 38.7 percent of the mail pieces, with an encode error rate of 8.4 percent. Adjusting system parameters designed to tradeoff encode rate for error rate produces an encode rate of 33.8 percent with a 3.9 percent encode error rate.

Citation Download Citation

Richard M. Rovner, Andrew M. Gillies, Margaret J. Ganzberger, and Daniel J. Hepp "Strategies for the automatic interpretation of handwritten addresses", Proc. SPIE 2103, 22nd AIPR Workshop: Interdisciplinary Computer Vision: Applications and Changing Needs, (25 February 1994); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.169468

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