OCR and OCV

We often speak about "OCR/OCV" in a generic way when we refer to a camera system that inspects a printed code and, depending on who you speak to, you tend to get a different definition of which is "better" and what function is being performed in each case.
A conversation earlier today thew up a nice, succinct definition, so it seemed worthy of a blog.

Firstly the meaning of the acronyms. OCV means Optical Character Verification whereas OCR means Optical Character Recognition.
The difference in what they do is that OCR is used when the characters being inspected are unknown and need to be "recognised" whereas OCV is used when the characters are known and their legibility needs to be "verified" to a known standard.

To demonstrate with a couple of examples. A cheque has a number at the bottom of it which is unknown at the time of inspection, but the OCR system will reconise the numbers for what they are and send this number to another system.

In pharmaceutical production a batch number and expiry date will be printed on the product and will be constant for the entire batch. Here the OCV system will be taught what the code should look like and will then will compare each print against the known image before determining whether it is good or bad. The system may be given several examples of what each character might look like and certain "danger areas" can be highlighted if one character could look like another e.g. an R turning into a P.

OCV systems, as used in the pharmaceutical industry, can also read a Pharmacode and Datamatrix barcode (including online grading) to give complete inspection of the printed code while confirming that the component being printed is the correct one.

As a footnote, we often use the OCR-B font for use with an OCV system as it is easier to inspect and there are no "danger areas"

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