CORU: Comprehensive Post-OCR Parsing and Receipt Understanding Dataset

In the fields of Optical Character Recognition (OCR) and Natural Language Processing (NLP), integrating multilingual capabilities remains a critical challenge, especially when considering languages with complex scripts such as Arabic. This paper introduces the Comprehensive Post-OCR Parsing and Receipt Understanding Dataset (CORU), a novel dataset specifically designed to enhance OCR and information extraction from receipts in multilingual contexts involving Arabic and English. CORU consists of over 20,000 annotated receipts from diverse retail settings, including supermarkets and clothing stores, alongside 30,000 annotated images for OCR that were utilized to recognize each detected line, and 10,000 items annotated for detailed information extraction. These annotations capture essential details such as merchant names, item descriptions, total prices, receipt numbers, and dates. They are structured to support three primary computational tasks: object detection, OCR, and information extraction. We establish the baseline performance for a range of models on CORU to evaluate the effectiveness of traditional methods, like Tesseract OCR, and more advanced neural network-based approaches. These baselines are crucial for processing the complex and noisy document layouts typical of real-world receipts and for advancing the state of automated multilingual document processing. Our datasets are publicly accessible (https://github.com/Update-For-Integrated-Business-AI/CORU).

A Comprehensive Survey of Masked Faces: Recognition, Detection, and Unmasking

Masked face recognition (MFR) has emerged as a critical domain in biometric identification, especially by the global COVID-19 pandemic, which introduced widespread face masks. This survey paper presents a comprehensive analysis of the challenges and advancements in recognising and detecting individuals with masked faces, which has seen innovative shifts due to the necessity of adapting to new societal norms. Advanced through deep learning techniques, MFR, along with Face Mask Recognition (FMR) and Face Unmasking (FU), represent significant areas of focus. These methods address unique challenges posed by obscured facial features, from fully to partially covered faces. Our comprehensive review delves into the various deep learning-based methodologies developed for MFR, FMR, and FU, highlighting their distinctive challenges and the solutions proposed to overcome them. Additionally, we explore benchmark datasets and evaluation metrics specifically tailored for assessing performance in MFR research. The survey also discusses the substantial obstacles still facing researchers in this field and proposes future directions for the ongoing development of more robust and effective masked face recognition systems. This paper serves as an invaluable resource for researchers and practitioners, offering insights into the evolving landscape of face recognition technologies in the face of global health crises and beyond.

Advancements and Challenges in Arabic Optical Character Recognition: A Comprehensive Survey

Optical character recognition (OCR) is a vital process that involves the extraction of handwritten or printed text from scanned or printed images, converting it into a format that can be understood and processed by machines. This enables further data processing activities such as searching and editing. The automatic extraction of text through OCR plays a crucial role in digitizing documents, enhancing productivity, improving accessibility, and preserving historical records. This paper seeks to offer an exhaustive review of contemporary applications, methodologies, and challenges associated with Arabic Optical Character Recognition (OCR). A thorough analysis is conducted on prevailing techniques utilized throughout the OCR process, with a dedicated effort to discern the most efficacious approaches that demonstrate enhanced outcomes. To ensure a thorough evaluation, a meticulous keyword-search methodology is adopted, encompassing a comprehensive analysis of articles relevant to Arabic OCR, including both backward and forward citation reviews. In addition to presenting cutting-edge techniques and methods, this paper critically identifies research gaps within the realm of Arabic OCR. By highlighting these gaps, we shed light on potential areas for future exploration and development, thereby guiding researchers toward promising avenues in the field of Arabic OCR. The outcomes of this study provide valuable insights for researchers, practitioners, and stakeholders involved in Arabic OCR, ultimately fostering advancements in the field and facilitating the creation of more accurate and efficient OCR systems for the Arabic language.

Customer Profiling, Segmentation, and Sales Prediction using AI in Direct Marketing

In an increasingly customer-centric business environment, effective communication between marketing and senior management is crucial for success. With the rise of globalization and increased competition, utilizing new data mining techniques to identify potential customers is essential for direct marketing efforts. This paper proposes a data mining preprocessing method for developing a customer profiling system to improve sales performance, including customer equity estimation and customer action prediction. The RFM-analysis methodology is used to evaluate client capital and a boosting tree for prediction. The study highlights the importance of customer segmentation methods and algorithms to increase the accuracy of the prediction. The main result of this study is the creation of a customer profile and forecast for the sale of goods.