Abstract: A reliable optical character recognition system substantially insensitive to variations in character stroke size is provided for reading numeric and special characters printed on a document surface in plural fonts of unknown order. More particularly, a character is scanned and its image stored in a two-dimensional mosaic without requiring precise positioning therein, amplitude correlation for video signal quantization, or normalization of character stroke sizes. The image mosaic is scanned by a row-column analyzer to detect primary features of the image including the number of character segments in the rows and columns, the segment length and rightmost segment coordinate for those rows containing only a single segment, and the segment length for those columns having a single segment. Feature decision logic analyzes the primary features to form a set of secondary features based upon the occurrence and order of the primary features.

Abstract: Signature verification where an image mosaic for a signature to be verified is stored in a memory and wherein a prototype feature set for said signature is stored in memory. Binary signals representative of the location and magnitude of positive and negative peaks in mosaic and the stroke character in the region of each of said peaks are generated. A two-dimensional feature set patterned after the prototype set is stored with the signals ordered in dependence upon the occurrence of the peaks in the signature and accompanied by (i) peak rank in terms of peak magnitude and (ii) stroke character in the vicinity of each peak. The feature vector set is then compared with the prototype vector set and identity is signaled when within predetermined limits the feature set matches the prototype set.