Can Azure Read Handle Equations - azure

Question

Can Microsoft Azure's Read API read equations and if so, what form would it return them in? I don't want to build an equation OCR myself for my app and would like to know if there is an Azure (or maybe AWS/GCP, but I would prefer Azure) service that can read images containing hand-draw equations.
Extra info
language: I am using python to build the app
pricing: free tier/open source, but up to $60 would still be expectable
usage: I don't think that the app that I am building will get more than 1K requests before I shut it down (it's basically a proof-of-concept app)

Answer 1

There is a way to solve this problem. If the application you are running is a web app or mobile app, we have predefined read API based computer vision portal designed for math operations recognition.
Reason: the read API is working fine for the normal form contents detection, as there are pre-defined structures for the forms. But there is no pre-defined structure for the equations.
In the same case if we need to solve the equation based (Math operations), we need not create OCR. As the application you are working with is python based, directly navigate the application for vision studio which will detect the handwritten equations and give the result. The result can be acquired in the form of JSON.
I have a handwritten image with equation on it.
Go to : https://portal.vision.cognitive.azure.com/gallery/ocr
Click on the only option available
We can take live pictures or upload images. I reproduced the issue by uploading the equation image
It detected successfully
[
{
"page": 1,
"angle": -0.5468,
"width": 1840,
"height": 1034,
"unit": "pixel",
"lines": [
{
"boundingBox": [
250,
399,
1612,
392,
1615,
552,
253,
571
],
"appearance": {
"style": {
"name": "handwriting",
"confidence": 1
}
},
"text": "(a+b) = a2+2ab+b2",
"words": [
{
"boundingBox": [
251,
404,
644,
394,
654,
559,
261,
572
],
"text": "(a+b)",
"confidence": 0.764
},
{
"boundingBox": [
674,
394,
785,
393,
794,
554,
684,
558
],
"text": "=",
"confidence": 0.619
},
{
"boundingBox": [
815,
392,
1594,
406,
1602,
530,
824,
553
],
"text": "a2+2ab+b2",
"confidence": 0.694
}
]
}
]
}
]
The above is the JSON response.