optical character recognition

noun, Computers.
1.
the process or technology of reading data in printed form by a device (optical character reader) that scans and identifies characters.
Abbreviation: OCR.
Origin
1960-65
optical character recognition in Science
optical character recognition  
The electronic identification and digital encoding of printed or handwritten characters by means of an optical scanner and specialized software.
optical character recognition in Technology

text
(OCR, sometimes /oh'k*/) Recognition of printed or written characters by computer. Each page of text is converted to a digital using a scanner and OCR is then applied to this image to produce a text file. This involves complex image processing algorithms and rarely achieves 100% accuracy so manual proof reading is recommended.
(1999-08-26)