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Optical Mark Recognition on documents
The ability to automatically recognize marks made on documents and transform those marks into digital index data opens up huge possibilities for data capture. The automating of processes from questionnaire data capture, verification of the presence or not of handwritten amendments, rubber stamps or signatures, and the total scoring of multiple-choice exam papers enables the complete rethinking of data management from paper.
Checkbox marks
Scan2x can determine whether a checkbox on a document has been checked. Marks made by humans in checkboxes can take the form of ticks, spots, crosses or simply a scribble, and so Scan2x will not differentiate between the different type of marks in the box – it will simply register the presence or otherwise of some form of mark.
This True or False status can then be used to determine the final value of an index field for a document within Scan2x. For example:
A checkbox on a document like the following:
Do you eat meat?
can be used to complete an index field in Scan2x called “Meal Preference”, in which the values “Vegetarian” or “Standard” can be inserted depending upon the status of the checkbox.
Questionnaires
Taking advantage of the Scan2x’s capabilities above, it follows that entire questionnaires can be scanned, and their data captured for later processing.
It is possible to define questions and possible answers within Scan2x Job Configuration, with rules to allow Scan2x to detect if illegal or vague answers have been submitted. For example:
A question such as the following must have exactly one answer:
WHAT COLOUR IS THE SKY?
Possible answers can be configured as RED, GREEN and BLUE, with rules to define that exactly one answer is expected. If a document is scanned with (a) no answer or (b) more than one answer ticked, then Scan2x will ask for human clarification.
Multiple Choice Examination Paper scoring
Carrying on from the above two uses for Optical Mark Recognition functionality, it is also possible to assign a score to each answer. Using this scoring, it is therefore possible for Scan2x to process many examination papers in one batch – each exam document will be processed, scored and the score written to the index data. In addition, a summary will be generated which can then be saved, printed or emailed.
The ability of the Scan2x system to detect the presence of a mark on a predefined zone on a page opens up the scope of intelligent document recognition significantly, by making the automatic interpretation of multiple-choice exam papers, questionnaires and surveys an automated process.
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