tesseract-ocrHow can I use Tesseract OCR to recognize math equations?

Tesseract OCR can be used to recognize math equations by first preprocessing the image to make it easier for Tesseract to recognize. This can include binarizing the image, removing noise, and pre-processing the characters. Once the image is ready, Tesseract can be used to recognize the equation.

Example code

#import pytesseract
import cv2

# Read image
image = cv2.imread('equation.png')

# Preprocess image
gray = cv2.cvtColor(image, cv2.COLOR_BGR2GRAY)
thresh = cv2.threshold(gray, 0, 255, cv2.THRESH_BINARY_INV + cv2.THRESH_OTSU)[1]

# Recognize equation
equation = pytesseract.image_to_string(thresh)

print(equation)

Output example

2x + 3 = 7

Code explanation

• import cv2: Imports the OpenCV library which is used to preprocess the image.
• image = cv2.imread('equation.png'): Reads the equation image.
• gray = cv2.cvtColor(image, cv2.COLOR_BGR2GRAY): Converts the image to grayscale.
• thresh = cv2.threshold(gray, 0, 255, cv2.THRESH_BINARY_INV + cv2.THRESH_OTSU)[1]: Binarizes the image using Otsu's binarization method.
• equation = pytesseract.image_to_string(thresh): Uses Tesseract OCR to recognize the equation.

Helpful links

• OpenCV Documentation
• Tesseract OCR Documentation

Edit this code on GitHub