PS960 - Key Data Capture Options

OMR

Although the PS960 employs an imaging read-head, it is still a fully functional Optical Mark Reader (OMR) machine.  OMR remains the simplest, cheapest and most accurate way to collect simple category information from forms in a high volume or time critical environment.  Backward compatibility with the DRS range of OMR readers is maintained.
The real power of the PS960 comes from applying the real time ‘data now’ approach of OMR to the capture of multiple other data types (like images, barcodes and OCR).

Image Clipping

An unlimited number of image clips can be captured from each page and saved to disk or retained in memory for real time processing.  Clips can be of an entire page or just a small portion and the resolution and bit depth of each is independently controllable.

This has enormous benefits where a range of image types must be collected from a single form.  For example, in a registration exercise using photographs it would be typical to collect bitonal images of write-in areas and to capture the photograph in greyscale.  A traditional scanner must capture the page at the highest resolution and bit depth and then convert to the formats required as a separate process.  This creates a lot of data traffic that is completely wasted and adds time-consuming image manipulation.

The PS960 allows the photograph alone to be captured in 8 bit greyscale while other portions of the form are captured as bitonal, with no intermediate conversion required.  This reduces network traffic, lowers total storage requirements and reduces the number of process stages.

Barcodes

The PS960 supports a variety of barcode formats and can very quickly use these to return information to an application.  Barcodes are typically used to identify a form type as it is scanned or to uniquely identify a particular form among a batch. There is no limit to the number of barcodes that the PS960 can collect from each form.  Barcodes can also be used to determine the orientation of a form as the form is scanned.  This enables full advantage to be taken of clipping particular image areas from forms fed in any orientation.

OCR

In some situations barcodes may not be an appropriate technology.  There may be difficulty in producing forms with unique barcodes, some applications may preclude the use of barcodes or there may already be a legacy of existing form stock that uses printed numbers or letters instead.

Once again, the real time processing capabilities of the PS960 provide a solution.  Regions with machine printed numbers are defined in exactly the same way as barcodes or image clips and the PS960 will accurately capture them in real time.  Reader throughput is maintained at 100% for any reasonable length of printed characters.

With check digits encoded into the number, the Optical Character Recognition (OCR) on the PS960 is so accurate that it is considered a suitable replacement for barcodes.  This offers another option for potentially reducing costs and complexity in the form production stages.

Carriage Printing

Using the optional carriage printer a single line of character can be printed along the length of each form in any horizontal position.  If the data printed is automatically generated such as date, time or document sequence number, then the full rated throughput of the reader is maintained.  However, if what is printed is derived from data extracted from the form then some application delay is introduced.  For example printing the result of a multiple choice exam on the test paper after reading the answers and calculating a score.  However, even in a scenario such as this, the speed of 4000-6000 forms/hour is still achievable.

It is the combination of all these key features that make the PS960 an efficient and effective solution to many document processing challenges.