Improving OCR Accuracy with AdvancedScan

Why AdvancedScan Differs from Standard IronOCR

The main distinction is the OCR engine behind each package:

• Standard IronOCR: runs on the Tesseract engine.
• IronOcr.Extensions.AdvancedScan: runs on PaddleOCR, which adds machine learning capabilities.

That machine learning layer makes AdvancedScan effective on noisy images such as screenshots, and on structured inputs like passports and license plates. The package exposes specialized methods for these cases:

• ReadLicensePlate()
• ReadPassport()
• ReadPhoto()
• ReadDocumentAdvanced()
• ReadScreenShot()

Solution

var ocr = new IronTesseract();
using var input = new OcrInput();
input.LoadPdf("document.pdf");
// Upscale and sharpen low-resolution input before reading
input.EnhanceResolution();
var result = ocr.ReadDocumentAdvanced(input);
Console.WriteLine(result.Text);

var ocr = new IronTesseract();
using var input = new OcrInput();
input.LoadPdf("document.pdf");
// Upscale and sharpen low-resolution input before reading
input.EnhanceResolution();
var result = ocr.ReadDocumentAdvanced(input);
Console.WriteLine(result.Text);

Imports IronOcr

Dim ocr As New IronTesseract()
Using input As New OcrInput()
    input.LoadPdf("document.pdf")
    ' Upscale and sharpen low-resolution input before reading
    input.EnhanceResolution()
    Dim result = ocr.ReadDocumentAdvanced(input)
    Console.WriteLine(result.Text)
End Using

Limitations

AdvancedScan delivers strong accuracy, but there are trade-offs to know about:

• Fewer result features: the result objects returned by AdvancedScan methods carry fewer features than the standard OcrResult object.
• No searchable PDFs yet: creating searchable PDFs from AdvancedScan output is not currently supported. This feature is under development.
• Varying return types: different read methods return different result object types, so check the API Reference for the specifics of each.
• Limited language support: currently English, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and LatinAlphabets.

For customers hitting accuracy problems with standard IronOCR, adding IronOcr.Extensions.AdvancedScan is worth trying. Its PaddleOCR engine and machine learning enhancements make it a strong alternative for complex image processing tasks.