INFORMys: A Flexible Invoice-Like Form-Reader System

In this paper, we describe a flexible form-reader system capable of extracting textual information from accounting documents, like invoices and bills of service companies. In this kind of document, the extraction of some information fields cannot take place without having detected the corresponding instruction fields, which are only constrained to range in given domains. We propose modeling the document’s layout by means of attributed relational graphs, which turn out to be very effective for form registration, as well as for performing a focussed search for instruction fields. This search is carried out by means of a hybrid model, where proper algorithms, based on morphological operations and connected components, are integrated with connectionist models. Experimental results are given in order to assess the actual performance of the system.