Abstract: This invention relates to an automatic identification method for scanned documents in an electronic document capture and storage system. The invention uses the technique of recognition of global document features compared to a knowledge base of known document types. The system first segments the digitized image of a document into physical and logical areas of significance and attempts to label these areas by determining the type of information they contain, without using OCR techniques. The system then attempts to match the areas segmented to objects described in the knowledge base. The system labels the areas successfully matched then selects the most probable document type based on the areas found within the document. Using computer learning methods, the system is capable of improving its knowledge of the documents it is supposed to recognize, by dynamically modifying the characteristics of its knowledge base thus sharpening its decision making capability.