JP2749947B

PURPOSE:To make it unnecessary to use a dictionary and to shorten a collating time by detecting the inclination angle of a character pattern, extracting peripheral distribution, detecting a division point, setting up a division boundary in a character circumscribed frame, extracting a feature in each divided area, and then stabilizing the extracted feature. CONSTITUTION:In a plane expressed by an X-Y coordinate system including a character pattern stored in a pattern register 4, coordinates applying the maximum and minimum values of alphax + betay relating to black picture elements (BPEs) in the pattern are detected by a character inclination detector 8. A peripheral distribution extracting part 9 extracts peripheral distribution based on an inclination angle and a division point detecting part 10 detects a division point by using the distribution. Then a feature matrix extracting part 11 sets up a division boundary based on the inclination angle and the peripheral distribution and extracts a feature matrix. Thereby, the feature extracted even from an inclined character pattern can also be stabilized, so that the preparation of a dictionary corresponding to the deformation of character inclination in an identification (ID) part is unnecessary. Thus, a dictionary collating time can be shortened and a processing time can be increased.