Extraction of User Entered Components from a Personal Bankcheck Using Morphological Subtraction

Abstract

In this paper we propose a new method to extract user entered components from a personal bankcheck. The proposed technique utilizes a pair of personal bankcheck images: (i) blank check image referred to as the reference image and (ii) a filled-in check image referred to as the sample image. This pair of check images (reference image and sample image) differ only at specific regions of the check reserved for insertion of handwritten (machine printed) components. A sophisticated technique of inter-image subtractions can extract the user entered components. Also the background patterns of reference image and sample images are not identical because of statistical variations in printing and scanning conditions. The authors propose a morphological inter-image subtraction that consists of a GLS-fusion procedure and a logical subtraction procedure in gray-level space (GLS) (x, y, f(x, y)) to extract user entered components from the filled bankcheck. The user entered components are extracted by this method in a very robust manner and the extracted components are suitable for posterior word/string recognition step. This method with morphological subtraction can also be used for other forms.