I have a table similar to this where the text is actually handwritten. I want to be able to check if each field has been filled out but understanding or recognising what each field says is not necessary. I just need to be able to detect that the field has been filled out.
People will have to scan pages with a scanner and the program should detect the fields and check if they have any contents essentially. Does anyone have any ideas or know of simple solutions. I was thinking using ICR or OCR but OCR can't detect handwritten text and ICR is only good if you pay for it but it is too good.
This could be very easy but it depends on how static the situation is. Convert the image to a grayscale image then apply a threshold to separate black and white. Next you have to ignore the too small white regions that belong to letters like a or o and then apply a closing to the remaining regions to get the single table cells. Now you can determine the average gray value at the position of each region. If it is above a certain value, then you have found a cell that is filled in. This method only works if the white background of a cell is somehow connected, otherwise the closing will not work as desired. The lighting situation is also critical with fixed threshold values.