Text labels are an integral part of cadastral maps and floor plans. Text is also prevalent in natural scenes around us in the form of road signs, billboards, house numbers, and place names. Extracting this text can provide additional context and details about the places the text describes and the information it conveys. Digitization of documents and extracting text from them helps in retrieving and archiving of important information.
This deep learning model is based on the MMOCR model and uses optical character recognition (OCR) technology to detect text in images. This model was trained on a large dataset of different types and styles of text with diverse background and contexts, allowing for precise text extraction. It can be applied to various tasks such as automatically detecting and reading text from billboards, sign boards, scanned maps, and so on, converting images containing text to actionable data.
License requirements
To complete this workflow, the following are the license requirements:
- ArcGIS Desktop—ArcGIS Image Analyst extension for ArcGIS Pro
- ArcGIS Enterprise—ArcGIS Image Server with raster analytics configured
- ArcGIS Online—ArcGIS Pro or Professional Plus user type.
Model details
This model has the following characteristics:
- Input—High-resolution, 3-band street-level imagery with medium to large size text in it or a scanned document.
- Output—A feature layer with boxes bounding the text detected in the input image.
- Compute—This workflow is compute-intensive, and a GPU with minimum CUDA compute capability of 6.0 is recommended.
- Architecture—This model is based on the open-source MMOCR model by MMLab. It uses the PSENet model for text detection and ABINet model for text recognition.
Access and download the model
Download the Optical Character Recognition pretrained model from ArcGIS Living Atlas of the World. Alternatively, access the model directly from ArcGIS Pro or consume it in ArcGIS Image for ArcGIS Online.
Download the model with ArcGIS Online
Complete the following steps to download the model with ArcGIS Online:
- Browse to ArcGIS Living Atlas of the World.
- Sign in with your ArcGIS Online credentials.
- Search for Optical Character Recognition and open the item page from the search results.
- Click the Download button to download the model.You can use the downloaded .dlpk file directly in ArcGIS Pro, or upload and use it in ArcGIS Enterprise.
Download the model in ArcGIS Pro
Complete the following steps to download the model in ArcGIS Pro:
- Open ArcGIS Pro.
- Click the Catalog pane and select Portal.
- Click Living Atlas and search for Optical Character Recognition.
- Right-click the model and download the .dlpk file.
Release notes
The following are the release notes:
| Date | Description |
|---|---|
| July 2023 | First release of Optical Character Recognition |