IP Library Granted Patent US 12,456,319
Granted Patent B2
US 12,456,319 · App. 18/018,846 · Granted Oct 28, 2025

Systems and methods for machine learning key-value extraction on documents

Inventor: Hu Cao (Cypress, CA)
Assignee: TUNGSTEN AUTOMATION CORPORATION
G06V30/19147G06V30/18181G06V30/19173G06V30/412G06V30/413
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Quick Facts
Patent No.
US 12,456,319
App. No.
18/018,846
Granted
Oct 28, 2025
Kind
B2
Abstract

A machine learning based key-value extraction model extracts fields/entities from documents. The input images are processed through OCR. A list of words (uni-grams) and their coordinates are extracted from the original images. Following word cleaning and manipulation, n-gram creation (multi-words), and feature engineering, the transformed data is fed into a classification algorithm to predict if a uni-gram or n-gram is one of the target entities or a non-entity. Following the first step that includes unique feature engineering, a second step improves extraction accuracy among the fields/entities.

Claims (59)

1. A method to train a machine-learning model to extract key-values from documents, the method comprising:

receiving a collection of training document images;

creating a training data set from the collection; and

training a classification model using the training data set, wherein training the classification model further comprises applying at least a plurality of features to the training data set, the plurality of features comprising:

a first feature corresponding to a location of an n-gram,

a second feature corresponding to a plurality of letter cases,

a third feature corresponding to textual character type,

a fourth feature corresponding to a regular expression,

a fifth feature corresponding to a number of characters used to distinguish between different entities among target classes, and

a sixth feature corresponding to punctuation.

2. The method of claim 1 , wherein the first feature corresponding to the location of the n-gram uses a graph-like data structure.

3. The method of claim 2 , wherein the graph-like data structure indicates the nearest words neighboring the location of the n-gram.

4. The method as in one of claims 1-3 , wherein the second feature corresponding to letter case indicates numerical and non-numerical character types, wherein the plurality of letter cases includes upper case(s) and lower case(s).

5. The method of claim 1 , further comprising:

applying optical character recognition to a document image, wherein applying optical character recognition outputs a plurality of document objects;

applying threshold values to priors of the plurality of document objects;

determining, from the plurality of document objects, a subset of document objects based at least in part on some of the priors of the plurality of document objects not satisfying the threshold values; and

applying the trained classification model to the subset of document objects.

6. The method of claim 1 , further comprising:

applying optical character recognition to a document image, wherein applying optical character recognition outputs a plurality of document objects; and

applying the trained classification model to the plurality of document objects, wherein applying the trained classification model further comprises:

outputting entities and non-entities with corresponding probabilities indicating a likelihood of correctness for each entity and non-entity.

7. The method of claim 1 , wherein the sixth feature corresponding to punctuation is based on a unique punctuation characters that are observable within an entity.

8. A system comprising:

a data store configured to store computer-executable instructions; and

a hardware processor in communication with the data store, the hardware processor, when executing the computer-executable instructions, configured to:

receive a collection of training document images;

create a training data set from the collection; and

train a classification model using the training data set, wherein training the classification model further comprises applying at least a plurality of features to the training data set, the plurality of features comprising:

a first feature corresponding to a location of an n-gram,

a second feature corresponding to a plurality of letter cases,

a third feature corresponding to textual character type,

a fourth feature corresponding to a regular expression,

a fifth feature corresponding to a number of characters used to distinguish between different entities among target classes, and

a sixth feature corresponding to punctuation.

9. The system of claim 8 , wherein the first feature corresponding to the location of the n-gram uses a graph-like data structure.

10. The system of claim 9 , wherein the graph-like data structure indicates the nearest words neighboring the location of the n-gram.

11. The system as in one of claims 8-10 , wherein the second feature corresponding to letter case indicates numerical and non-numerical character types, wherein the plurality of letter cases includes upper case(s) and lower case(s).

12. The system of claim 7 , wherein the hardware processor is further configured to execute further computer-executable instructions to:

apply optical character recognition to a document image, wherein applying optical character recognition outputs a plurality of document objects; and

apply the trained classification model to the plurality of document objects, wherein applying the trained classification model further comprises:

outputting entities and non-entities with corresponding probabilities indicating a likelihood of correctness for each entity and non-entity.

13. A system comprising:

a data store configured to store computer-executable instructions; and

a hardware processor in communication with the data store, the computing device, when executing the computer-executable instructions, configured to:

receive a collection of training document images;

create a training data set from the collection; and

train a classification model using the training data set, wherein training the classification model further comprises applying at least a plurality of features to the training data set, the plurality of features comprising:

a first feature corresponding to a location of an n-gram,

a second feature corresponding to letter case,

a third feature corresponding to textual character type,

a fourth feature corresponding to a regular expression,

a fifth feature corresponding to a number of characters, and

a sixth feature corresponding to punctuation,

wherein the hardware processor is further configured to execute further computer-executable instructions to:

apply optical character recognition to a document image, wherein applying optical character recognition outputs a plurality of document objects;

apply threshold values to priors of the plurality of document objects;

determine, from the plurality of document objects, a subset of document objects based at least in part on some of the priors of the plurality of document objects not satisfying the threshold values; and

apply the classification model to the subset of document objects.

Assignments (3)
ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNOR'S INTEREST Recorded May 15, 2024
From: KOFAX, INC.
To: TUNGSTEN AUTOMATION CORPORATION
Reel/Frame 067428/0392 →
MERGER AND CHANGE OF NAME Recorded Jul 11, 2023
From: EPHESOFT INC.; KOFAX, INC.
To: KOFAX, INC.
Reel/Frame 064728/0292 →
ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNOR'S INTEREST Recorded Mar 28, 2023
From: CAO, HU
To: EPHESOFT INC.
Reel/Frame 063186/0078 →
Continuity (2)
Provisional Application 63059872 · Jul 31, 2020
Related Publication 20230306768A1 · Sep 28, 2023
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