Extracting hierarchical data points and tables from scanned contracts

We present a technique for developing systems to automatically extract information from scanned semi-structured contracts. Such contracts are based on a template, but have different layouts and clientspecific changes. While the presented technique is applicable to all kinds of such contracts we specifically focus on so called ISDA credit support annexes. The data model for such documents consists of 150 individual entities some of which are tables that could span multiple pages. The information extraction is based on the Apache UIMA framework. It consists of a collection of small and simple Analysis Components that extract increasingly complex information based on earlier extractions. This technique is applied to extract individual data points and tables. Experiments show an overall precision of 97% with a recall of 93% regarding individual/simple data points and 89%/81% for table cells measured against manually entered ground truth. Due to its modular nature our system can be easily extended and adapted to other collections of contracts as long as some data model can be formulated.