Recognition: Barcodes

 Audience

This article is meant for PSIcapture Administrators.

Overview

The following is a breakdown of the Recognition: Barcodes section of PSIcapture.

When separating documents using barcodes or populating index fields with barcode values, the user must select the ‘Enable Barcode Detection’ box. Once Barcode Detection is enabled, the program will attempt to recognize any barcodes during the capture process.

Image Processing - For more information on Image Processing, see: Capture Profile: Image Processing Tab

Barcode Engine - The two engines available are Standard Engine and Legacy Engine. The following options are available once Barcode Detection is enabled:

Barcode Types to Detect

There are many types of Barcodes that can be used on documents. Select the barcode type or types the user wishes to recognize for this Capture Profile. 

NOTE: Selecting all the possible barcode types listed and not just the barcode types that are not necessary will cause a potentially significant loss of performance during capture.

The list of supported barcode types is displayed in the "Barcode Types" section. Select the options applicable to your unique configuration.

Preview

 - Saves the current barcode type. NOTE: Available in version 6.1 and above.

 - Select a sample image page from file containing barcodes to determine the types of barcodes present and check for functionality.

 - Capture a sample image page containing barcodes to determine the types of barcodes present and check for functionality.

Options

Recognize using - At least one barcode type must be selected before clicking Preview to enable this option. 

• Selected barcode types only - Only attempts to detect the selected barcode types
• All supported barcode types - Attempts to detect all supported barcode types

Selected Barcode Types Only - Choose this option if the user has already determined specific barcode types that will be used.

All Supported Barcode Types - Chose if the type of barcode is unknown.

Reset Image - Resets the captured or imported image.

Recognize 

 - Initiate detection. Each barcode will be listed in order of appearance on the page next to their type and values. Example shown is preview image above.

Barcode Orientation

If barcodes will be captured either horizontally or vertically, select the appropriate option to enhance the speed of barcode recognition. If unsure of the direction by which the barcodes will be captured, select all of the directions to ensure that all barcodes will be read correctly. If “Support mis-formatted 3 of 9 barcodes is selected only “Left to Right” and “Top to Bottom” are available.

Barcode Splitting

Split Characters

Should the desired barcode contain multiple data values separated by a character, enter said character here in order to split the single barcode into multiple values. If the desired barcode contains 111,aaa,222enter , in the Split Characters box. For purposes of index the program will automatically parse or split the barcode into 3 logical barcodes, the first barcode will contain 111, the second will contain aaa and the third will contain 222. Further parsing options for barcodes based on fixed position are available in Step 5 of 9 (Index Data Fields) in the barcode tab.to split on tab use <TAB> and to split on new line use <NEWLINE>.

Options

Reading Quality

The user may further optimize the barcode recognition accuracy and performance by specifying the reading quality of barcodes. Users can choose between:

• Most Accurate - A slower process with more accurate results.
• Fastest - A faster process speeding up processing time with more margin for error.

Scan Interval

Additional optimization can be achieved by specifying the scan interval that the barcode recognition engine uses when looking for barcodes. The scan interval is the number of pixel rows it should skip when checking for barcodes. So when the value is set to 10, the engine will check every 10 rows for a barcode. Increasing the Scan Interval, will increase the speed of detection process, but at the same time can lead to omissions. Conversely, lowering the Scan Interval will slow barcode detection, but will result in more comprehensive detection. The default level of 10 as it balances both the speed of the engine while allowing a high level of detection. This interval is DPI dependent as a 200 DPI 8.5 x 11 page has 2200 pixel rows and a 300 DPI 8.5 x 11 page has 3300 pixel rows.

Enable Enhanced Barcodes

Selecting this feature enable a Code 39 to support its extended character set including + which can change the character following it to be read as lower case instead of the default which is upper case only.

Truncate Whitespace

Selecting this option will cause all spaces at the end of the barcode to be removed once the value is placed in an index field.

Skip recognition on back pages

Selecting this option will skip barcode detection on back pages, leading to increased performance during capture.

Decode barcode into readable text

This allows users to see exactly what is being read in the barcode and which format it is in. For example if a date is formatted as mmddyyyy vs mm/dd/yyyy.

Zones to Recognize

User can chose to detect the entire page (default) or define a zone for the recognition to process, further increasing performance. Hit “Define Zones” to proceed with Zone Configuration.

Zoom in to the desired area leaving room to maneuver. Then select the draw zones Icon and draw the zone(s). Name the zone and fill out which page of the document it is expected to be found on. The Zone Names are kept in a list for use anywhere in the program that the user can Define Zones. NOTE: The Page of the template and its resolution is displayed at the bottom of the screen and they MUST match the page and resolution at capture time.

 - Delete the highlighted unwanted zone. NOTE: If a zone is in use by any Capture Profile, the zone cannot be deleted.

 - this pulls up more OCR options like enabling OCR logical context filtering or enabling OCR Trigram mode.

 - Ungroup a cluster of child zones contained within the selected zone (child zones are used for OMR purposes).