Abstract: The present invention includes a method, a computer product and a system each of which features fitting a spatial recognition technique to enable a microprocessor to recognize hand-written characters, referred to herein as a cipher. This is achieved by fitting the cipher to a matrix having a plurality of cells with each cell having a plurality of pixels corresponding thereto and determining whether said cipher may be equally distributed among the plurality of cells. In this fashion, a subset of the pixels of a subgroup of the plurality of cells have a sub-portion of the cipher associated therewith and it is determined whether the number of pixels associated with each portion of the cipher are equal. If not, cells have excess pixels associated with a portion of the cipher, compared to other cells in the matrix, have the excess pixels assigned to a different cell. This facilitates creating a digital word that describes the cipher that is then compared with information in a look-up table.

Abstract: Pattern recognition, particularly character recognition, is effected by categorizing a cipher by a unique description using three feature sets identifying the type and location of lines which form the cipher, the location of the endpoints of each of the lines, and the location of the intersections of the lines. In the process according to the invention, lines are located by expanding or contracting the original image of the cipher to fit into a sparse space pixel matrix. The image is then thinned to define lines and so as not to obliterate lines which give the cipher its uniqueness. Once the cipher is thinned, fuzzy logic is used to "locate", that is, define a set of coordinates for, each line relative to an x-y coordinate system. (As each line is located, it is removed from the matrix image to facilitate locating the remaining lines.) After all the lines are located, the endpoints of each line are located and the intersect points are located.