METHOD OF AND DEVICE FOR IDENTIFYING THE DIRECTION OF CHARACTERS IN AN IMAGE BLOCK

The present invention discloses a method of and device for identifying the direction of characters in an image block. The method includes: performing optical character recognition processing on the image block by assuming various directions as assumed character directions to obtain sub image blocks, recognized characters corresponding to the sub image blocks and correctness measures thereof in each assumed character directions; in sub image blocks in the assumed character directions with 180° mutual relation, searching for a minimum matching pair of the sub image blocks; adjusting the sub image blocks in the searched minimum matching pair to eliminate the effect, on an identification result, of different numbers of sub image blocks in various assumed character directions; calculating an accumulative correctness measure in each assumed character directions based on the adjusted sub image blocks; and identifying the direction of characters in the image block according to the accumulative correctness measures.