Forms are the medium of business transactions. The useful information on forms appears in several formats

	Barcodes		Graphics or some other marks
	Printed text		Handwritten script or printed letters

Processing a high volume and large variety of forms input can best be done by employing forms processing software from a number of vendors. ClearImage products support the processing of forms and are used by a number of leading vendors.

Most forms are created in a structured format, where the intention is to collect well characterized, small snippets of information in each form field. Forms can be recognized by either their form number or by their appearance. Examples include applications, claim forms, tax returns, checks, and invoices.

The forms analysis and data extraction process consists of the following steps:

	Clean the borders, deskew and align the page
	Remove the form lines and correct blank lines in text or other object
	For each field analyze the input, if blank - may require exception handling
	For each field identify the input type and activate the appropriate input functions Printed Text - use OCR Handwriting - use ICR Barcode - use barcode recognition Other marks - use imaging tool
	Feed the information to the forms management application for further handling such as workflow, or archiving or database entry

Where Inlite Research Fits In
Inlite Professional Services can help you architect and debug the process for lower cost and higher performance. ClearImage products contribute capabilities to many steps in the process

In the Forms Processing Step - ClearImage Repair can automatically prepare the image for further processing using features which include:

Align the form, remove the borders and remove noise
Remove all lines from the form, and repair intersecting lines
Invert white text on black background (for OCR)
Where appropriate, smooth the characters for improved OCR performance

In the Forms Analysis Step - ClearImage Tools help the process designer deal with all the manipulations required to accept and analyze the forms, which include:

	Measure all aspects of the form, establishing a database of regions that need to be investigated, as well as geometric distortions of the image
	Measure the contents of each block to determine if it is blank or contains printed text, or if it has been marked otherwise.
	Extract important regions into separate images

These measurements can be used to merely analyze the forms to explore algorithms or as direct inputs into the application where they can determine the optimal activities by region of interest.

In the Barcode Recognition Step - ClearImage 1D Basic or 1D Pro, or PDF417 or DataMatrix can recognize and decode the data contained in any barcodes on the form

Form identifiers can guide further processing
Information in the barcode can be stored and can guide further processing