Match characters based on a text pattern "image"

What would be a good way to approach matching a String pattern of X's to any uppercase letter in the alphabet, A-Z, given a master pattern. I'm looking for either a code example (in Java) or just a general algorithm idea.

For example, I'm given the "master pattern" for 'T' of:

X  X  X  X  X  X  X  X  X  X
        X  X            
        X  X            
        X  X            
        X  X            
        X  X            
        X  X            
        X  X            
        X  X            
        X  X            
        X  X            

...and all of the following patterns must be determined to be T's based on the master pattern.

X  X  X  X  X  X  X  X  X
     X  X  X         
        X            
        X            
        X            
        X            
        X            
        X            
        X            
        X            
        X            

or

X  X  X  X  X  X  X  X  X
 开发者_如何学Python    X  X            
     X  X            
     X  X            
     X  X            
     X  X            
     X  X            
     X  X            
     X  X            
     X  X            
     X  X            

or

X  X  X  X  X  X  X  X  X
X  X  X  X  X  X  X  X  X
            X  X         
            X  X         
            X  X         
            X  X         
            X  X         
            X  X         
            X  X         
            X  X         
            X  X         
            X  X         

The algorithm would have to be generic enough to work for all letters; T is just an example.

Look into http://jocr.sourceforge.net/, which is a free OCR library. It's a C library, so using it directly is probably not an option for you. If nothing else, you can at least dig through the source.

You may also want to take a peak at http://userscripts.org/scripts/review/38736, which is a pure JavaScript implementation of a neural-net based OCR algorithm.

As has been mentioned in the comments already this is by no means a trivial problem to solve well, but you might be able to get by on a naive neural net that suits your data.