Azure Cognitive Services OCR giving differing results - how to remedy? - azure

Question

Azure CS has an OCR demo (westcentralus endpoint) at
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/cognitive-services/computer-vision/?v=18.05
On a poor test image (which I'm afraid I can't post because it's an identity document), I get OCR results that 100% match the actual text for three test cases in fact - remarkable.
However, when I follow the sample at the URL below, with the westeurope endpoint, I get poorer OCR results - some text is missing:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/cognitive-services/Computer-vision/quickstarts/python-print-text
Why is this? More to the point - how do I access the v=18.05 endpoint?
Thanks for all speedy help.

Answer 1

I think I got your point: you are not using the same operation between the 2 pages you mention.
If you read the paragraph just above the working demo you are mentioning here it says:
Get started with the OCR service in general availability, and discover
below a sneak peek of the new preview OCR engine (through "Recognize
Text" API operation) with even better text recognition results for
English.
And if you have a look to the other documentation you are pointing at (this one), they are using the OCR operation:
vision_base_url = "https://westcentralus.api.cognitive.microsoft.com/vision/v2.0/"
ocr_url = vision_base_url + "ocr"
So if you want to use this new preview version, change the operation to recognizeText
It is available in West Europe region (see here), and I made a quick test: the samples provided on Azure demo page are working with this operation, and not in the other one.
But this time the operation needs 2 calls:
One POST operation to submit your request (recognizeText operation), where you will have a 202 Accepted answer with an operationId
One GET opertaion to get the results (textOperations operation), with your OperationId from the previous step. For example: https://westeurope.api.cognitive.microsoft.com/vision/v2.0/textOperations/yourOperationId
DEMO :
For the CLOSED sign from Microsoft Demos:
Result with OCR operation:
{
"language": "unk",
"orientation": "NotDetected",
"textAngle": 0.0,
"regions": []
}
Result with RecognizeText:
{
"status": "Succeeded",
"recognitionResult": {
"lines": [{
"boundingBox": [174, 488, 668, 675, 617, 810, 123, 622],
"text": "CLOSED",
"words": [{
"boundingBox": [164, 494, 659, 673, 621, 810, 129, 628],
"text": "CLOSED"
}]
}, {
"boundingBox": [143, 641, 601, 811, 589, 843, 132, 673],
"text": "WHEN ONE DOOR CLOSES, ANOTHER",
"words": [{
"boundingBox": [147, 646, 217, 671, 205, 698, 134, 669],
"text": "WHEN"
}, {
"boundingBox": [230, 675, 281, 694, 269, 724, 218, 703],
"text": "ONE"
}, {
"boundingBox": [291, 697, 359, 722, 348, 754, 279, 727],
"text": "DOOR"
}, {
"boundingBox": [370, 726, 479, 767, 469, 798, 359, 758],
"text": "CLOSES,"
}, {
"boundingBox": [476, 766, 598, 812, 588, 839, 466, 797],
"text": "ANOTHER"
}]
}, {
"boundingBox": [56, 668, 645, 886, 633, 919, 44, 700],
"text": "OPENS.ALL YOU HAVE TO DO IS WALK IN",
"words": [{
"boundingBox": [74, 677, 223, 731, 213, 764, 65, 707],
"text": "OPENS.ALL"
}, {
"boundingBox": [233, 735, 291, 756, 280, 789, 223, 767],
"text": "YOU"
}, {
"boundingBox": [298, 759, 377, 788, 367, 821, 288, 792],
"text": "HAVE"
}, {
"boundingBox": [387, 792, 423, 805, 413, 838, 376, 824],
"text": "TO"
}, {
"boundingBox": [431, 808, 472, 824, 461, 855, 420, 841],
"text": "DO"
}, {
"boundingBox": [479, 826, 510, 838, 499, 869, 468, 858],
"text": "IS"
}, {
"boundingBox": [518, 841, 598, 872, 587, 901, 506, 872],
"text": "WALK"
}, {
"boundingBox": [606, 875, 639, 887, 627, 916, 594, 904],
"text": "IN"
}]
}]
}
}