Extracting text from passport images

To use this recognition method, install sparse text recognition model (aspose-ocr-text-in-wild-v1) in your project.

Automatic passport recognition and verification is a very common task in many areas: border control, banking, security, and so on. However, manually re-typing text is an error-prone and time-consuming process, and mistakes can lead to security breaches and other undesirable consequences.

Aspose.OCR offers a special recognition algorithm that extracts text from scanned or photographed passports, which can then be automatically saved to the database or automatically verified.

To extract text from a passport image, use RecognizePassport method of AsposeOCR class.

This method allows you to customize recognition accuracy, performance, and other settings.

The method takes OcrInput object and returns a list of recognition results containing the passport data.

AsposeOCR api = new AsposeOCR();
// Add images to the recognition batch
OcrInput input  = new OcrInput(InputType.SingleImage);
input.add(os.path.join(self.dataDir, "passport1.png"));
input.add(os.path.join(self.dataDir, "passport2.png"));
// Recognition settings
PassportRecognitionSettings recognitionSettings = new PassportRecognitionSettings();
recognitionSettings.setLanguage(Language.Ukr);
// Recognize passports
ArrayList<RecognitionResult> results = api.RecognizePassport(input, recognitionSettings);
results.forEach((result) -> {
	System.out.println(result.recognition_text);
});

Extracting passport details

Besides recognizing passport text, this method is capable of extracting essential information from a passport image, like date of birth, names, and more. The specific details extracted depend on the passport’s origin, which is specified in the setCountry() method of the passport recognition settings.

To retrieve the passport details, use the GetKeywords() method of the recognition results object. The information is returned as a Java HashMap with key-value pairs that are specific to each country.

Example

The following code snippet shows how to extract key details from US passport:

// Initialize Aspose.OCR recognition API
AsposeOCR api = new AsposeOCR();
// Add passport image to the recognition batch
OcrInput source = new OcrInput(InputType.SingleImage);
source.add("passport.png");
// Specify the country of passport origin
PassportRecognitionSettings settings = new PassportRecognitionSettings();
settings.setCountry(Country.USA);
// Extract and parse passport details
RecognitionResult result = api.RecognizePassport(input, settings).get(0);
HashMap<String, RecognitionResult.LinesResult> keywords = result.GetKeywords();
// Output passport details
for(String key : keywords.keySet()) {
	out.print("Key: "+key);
	out.println("  Value: "+keywords.get(key).textInLine);
}