Read a barcode from an image

[randalla]

I'm looking for a way to see if there is a barcode, or barcodes, in an image (TIFF or PDF) and then decode the barcode(s) for analysis. What we basically want to do is use our Kofax separator sheets to be able to split apart one large multi page document into several single or multi page documents. The documents are then imported into our image server for processing and storage.

The separator sheets have a barcode on the top and side (horizontal and vertical) that are used to determine orientation and that we're at a separate document.

What I've found so far is gocr, which to be honest isn't really doing what I want. I can see it identifies the barcodes, but it seems to come up with some odd results on very clear documents. Since we don't control the quality of the documents (they are being uploaded by our clients after all), I need to have a really good level of accuracy in identifying these particular bar codes. Since gocr is doing OCR plus barcodes, it seems that I'm getting what I want out of something that doesn't do what I need, necessarily. The barcodes are always going to be the same, and I don't care about the text in any of the other documents.

Since I can handle parsing through the uploaded multi-page files, all I need is to find if they have the barcode I'm looking for. Anyone have any ideas?

Adam.

[geki]

One way would be Octave (Matlab alternative).
http://www.octave.org

Plus its Image processing package.
I wonder how they are named in Gentoo.
I use it on Ubuntu.

Then you write your linescan algorithm for your horiz/vert barcode.
Possibly vectorize your algorithm to improve performance because Octave has no JIT-compiler to its interpreter.
See here for details.

And finally run your script with Octave from commandline ...
http://www.gnu.org/software/octave/doc/interpreter/Invoking-Octave-from-the-Command-Line.html#Invoking-Octave-from-the-Command-Line

So your script may print the information you want to process from any other language.

... or even better, link it in (C++).
http://www.gnu.org/software/octave/doc/interpreter/Standalone-Programs.html#Standalone-Programs

edit #1
I forgot to say: use QtOctave as GUI for developing/testing your code.

edit #2
inline: matlab help for vectorization.

edit #3
inline: link it to stand-alone program.
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