iPhone UIImage number recognition

I have a small UIImage (jpg) with a single typed number. I want to be able to read the number with some kind of pattern recognition. I'm really开发者_JS百科 not sure where to start, so any help would be appreciated.

my initial idea was to compare this image with other images. For instance compare the image with that of a 1,2,3, etc until a match was found. That just seems slow and cumbersome and wondered if there was a better way to do it?

Thanks

Update - I'm trying to convert sudoku puzzles from newspaper print to interactive puzzles

No, you are right, it will be slow and cumbersome. But on the plus side you don't have to write it yourself

http://sourceforge.net/projects/opencvlibrary/

Still not exactly easy tho, and i'm not sure about licensing, so… you don't mention why you need to do this (sounds a little odd).

Maybe you can avoid it? If you know the images are numerical digits 0-9, is there another way to track which one a particalur images is, apart from the way it's pixels are arranged?

Sorry if that sounds like i'm missing the point… Maybe you could fill in a few more details?

I read this really good write-up about this exact problem here: http://sudokugrab.blogspot.com/2009/07/how-does-it-all-work.html

It doesn't have any code samples, but explains the concepts, and might be able to point you in the right direction.

The following tutorial may be right down your alley: http://blog.damiles.com/2008/11/basic-ocr-in-opencv/ It is a simple tutorial on doing number recognition and comes with the source code also.

Additionally, you may want to do a search on OCR SDK (Optical Character Recognition Software Development Kit). You will surely find a stack of them. Commercial ones a pricey though.

I would go for a "role your own" approach along the line of the OpenCV tutorial, especially since you are only interested in numbers.

All of the best ':-)