ABBYY Announces Availability of New Modules for FineReader Engine 6.0

New modules for ABBYY FineReader® Engine 6.0, a software development toolkit (SDK) for integrating ABBYY’s FineReader OCR, ICR, OMR and barcode recognition technologies into Windows applications are now available.

New capabilities specifically geared for integration into document management and form-processing applications

ABBYY®, a leading developer of document recognition and linguistic technologies, today announced the availability of new modules for ABBYY FineReader® Engine 6.0, a software development toolkit (SDK) for integrating ABBYY’s FineReader OCR, ICR, OMR and barcode recognition technologies into Windows applications. The modules and improvements to existing ones provide new recognition and data export capabilities as well as increased recognition accuracy. These enhancements extend the value of FineReader Engine for software developers, system integrators, and VARs who are integrating ABBYY technologies specifically into document management and form-processing applications.

“FineReader Engine is popular among developers who are creating digital imaging applications that often require specialized recognition capabilities,” said Dean Tang, president and CEO of ABBYY USA. “We have created the new modules in response to our customer’s needs to expand functionality and optimize their real-world applications.”

New Modules for ABBYY FineReader Engine 6.0

• Document Analysis for Invoices -- is a new OCR module developed for the financial and banking market segments. This new module is intended to be used as a pre-processing engine for the conversion of semi-structured documents, such as invoices, payment drafts, checks and transfers. In this pre-processing role, the module is designed to find as much text as possible on these documents, including characters and numbers—even when this information is located within stamps, logos or small text areas.
  In contrast to standard OCR, this specialized OCR module assumes all printed information on documents is text and skips the zoning process. By omitting the zoning process, the module ensures that important text information is not incorrectly identified as graphic elements and that words or numerical values are not separated into multiple characters. As a result, maximum text information with its location coordinates is available for analysis, field-by-field processing and parsing performed in subsequent processing stages by other systems.
• XML Module - The new XML module exports recognition results tagged with document structure information, including the location of graphics, tables, paragraphs and even characters as well as the full formatting information of characters, paragraphs and tables. The XML module provides unrivalled power of post-recognition processing, making it easy to integrate this information with external applications, such as document management and content management systems and databases, like SQL Server, Oracle and SharePoint.
• Fast Mode Recognition - The new Fast Mode module is designed for high-volume document processing applications where speed is a more important priority than extremely high accuracy. This mode increases processing speed by 200-250%, making it particularly useful with document management and archiving systems.
• OMR Module - The new Optical Mark Recognition (OMR) module recognizes simple check-marks, radio-buttons, model check-marks, and check-marks with “corrections” made by hand. It delivers an accuracy rate of 99.995%. 
• 2D Barcode Recognition Module – The  new 2D barcode module recognizes PDF417, the industry standard for 2D barcodes.  PDF417 encodes up to 1.1 kilobytes of data, including text and graphics information.

Improved Modules for ABBYY FineReader Engine 6.0

• OCR Module - The updated OCR module provides new enhancements for the recognition of machine print, especially dot matrix text. The module automatically differentiates dot matrix text from normal print, eliminating the need to zone this text type manually. In addition, new algorithms increase recognition accuracy of dot matrix text. These algorithms are the result of ABBYY’s analysis of several thousand different kinds of dot matrix printer documents that cover almost all known types of dot matrix printers today. The tested documents include different print types: dot matrix, daisy wheel, chain and band printers by various manufactures, including both desktop and professional equipment in draft quality and NLQ (Near Letter Quality).
• ICR Module - The improved ICR module increases recognition accuracy by up to 77% and while enhance the recognition speed by up to 20% over the previous version. Accuracy is particularly enhanced on characters that touch or overlap. In addition, the module now recognizes handprint in 16 languages—up from 12 in the previous version. New languages are Spanish, Dutch, Finish, and Romanian.

ABBYY FineReader Development Tools: Engine and Scripting Edition

FineReader Engine 6.0 SDK provides developers with the tools to access the core functionality, or “engine,” of ABBYY’s award-winning FineReader applications. With this SDK, developers have the flexibility to either integrate FineReader recognition technology into existing applications or build powerful new applications from scratch. FineReader Engine 6.0 includes a set of Dynamic Link Libraries (DLLs) as well as open Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) that fully conform to the Component Object Model (COM) standard and can be easily used by C/C++, Visual Basic, Visual Studio.NET, Delphi, or any other development tools supporting COM components. A full description of FineReader Engine 6.0 is available at Software Development Kit section.

For users who want to customize the FineReader OCR application, ABBYY offers FineReader 6.0 Scripting Edition, which provides automation API tools. This solution enables system integrators, VARs, service bureaus or corporate IT developers to fully customize or modify ABBYY’s FineReader 6.0 OCR software and integrate it into other applications by writing a few lines of code—eliminating the need to develop applications from scratch.