MRZ OCR SDK — for ID Cards, Driver Licenses, Visas, and Passports

The MRZ OCR SDK technology uses a recognition engine which is very fast and accurate, even on poor-quality documents

ID documents like passports, visas, and other ID cards contain a Machine Readable Zone (MRZ) which makes them readable by machines. The GdPicture.NET OCR SDK allows you to create applications to extract and decode MRZ characters on all types of documents.

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What is a Machine Readable Zone — MRZ OCR

The Machine Readable Zone (MRZ) is found on Machine Readable Travel Documents (MRTD) like passports, visas, and other ID documents. It contains mandatory and optional data that can be read by devices using OCR.

MRZ uses OCR-B font and a specific number of characters and lines.

The specifications of MRTD and MRZ are provided by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) in its document 9303, which is endorsed by the International Organization for Standardization and the International Electrotechnical Commission as ISO/IEC 7501-1.

Below is an example from the specification issued by the ICAO.

Characters in the MRZ OCR SDK contain the following information:

type of ID document
issuing state
document number

name of the holder
date of birth
sex

date of expiry of the document
nationality of the holder
additional optional information

There are several standardized MRZ formats:

TD1 (ID card, passport card)
TD2 (passport)

TD3 (passport)
MRV-A (visa)

MRV-B (visa)

There are also other specific formats depending on the country. For instance, French and Portuguese ID cards don’t follow these standards.

Specifications of the MRZ OCR SDK

Machine Readable Travel Documents Part 1: Introduction

Machine Readable Travel Documents Part 2: Specifications for the Security of the Design, Manufacture, and Issuance of MRTDs

Machine Readable Travel Documents Part 3: Specifications Common to all MRTDs

Machine Readable Travel Documents Part 4: Specifications for Machine Readable Passports (MRPs) and other TD3 Size MRTDs

Machine Readable Travel Documents Part 5: Specifications for TD1 Size Machine Readable Official Travel Documents (MROTDs)

Machine Readable Travel Documents Part 6: Specifications for TD2 Size Machine Readable Official Travel Documents (MROTDs)

Machine Readable Travel Documents Part 7: Machine Readable Visas

The GdPicture.NET MRZ OCR SDK Engine

No matter if the MRZ lines are small, far away, blurred, partially occluded, skewed or slanted, our implementation can accurately detect and recognize every character.

You can use our tool to extract information from local identity cards, passports, enhanced driver licenses, visas, resident cards, and more.

The detector is agnostic and doesn’t decode (recognize/OCR) the text to check it against some pre-defined rules (regex) which means it supports all MRZ types (Travel Documents 1/2/3, MRVA, MRVB) regardless of the font, content, shape, or country.

MRZ recognition capabilities are included in the GdPicture.NET OCR SDK.

Documentation

Example of Usage

OCRSpecialContext Enumeration (MRZ)

    gdpictureOCR.SetImage(imageId);
    string resultId = gdpictureOCR.RunOCR(OCRSpecialContext.MRZ);
    string mrzRead = gdPictureOCR.GetOCRResultText(resultId);

How to Use

Download and install GdPicture.NET package from here.

You will find a compiled demo applications in [Install directory]\Samples\Bin\

You will find an example of a full application in [Install directory]\Samples\DotNet\GdPicture.NET 14\

You will find other code snippets within the online reference guide found here

GdPicture.NET Guides

FAQs

The MRZ is a section on Machine Readable Travel Documents (MRTDs) like passports, visas, and ID cards, containing encoded personal and document information. It is typically located at the bottom of the document and is formatted for easy reading by machines using OCR technology.

It supports all standardized MRZ formats, including:

MRV-B: Visas

TD1: ID cards and passport cards

TD2: Passports

TD3: Passports

MRV-A: Visas

The SDK is designed to accurately detect and recognize MRZ characters even in challenging conditions, such as poor-quality, blurred, or skewed images. It employs advanced image processing algorithms to correct distortions and enhance recognition accuracy.

It can extract various data fields from the MRZ, including:

Document type
Issuing country
Document number
Holder’s name
Date of birth
Gender
Document expiration date
Nationality
Additional optional information

These fields are standardized and provide essential details about the document and its holder.

Yes, the SDK adheres to the specifications outlined by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) in Document 9303, ensuring compatibility with globally recognized MRZ formats and standards

Yes, the GdPicture.NET MRZ OCR SDK is capable of processing images captured from various sources, including mobile devices. Its robust image processing capabilities allow it to handle images with varying quality and orientations, making it suitable for mobile applications.

The MRZ OCR SDK is utilized in various applications, such as:

Automated border control systems
Identity verification processes
Document authentication
Customer onboarding in banking and financial services
Travel and hospitality industry
and more…

These applications benefit from the rapid and accurate data extraction capabilities of the SDK

Yes, the SDK is optimized for high-performance applications and supports multi-threaded processing, allowing for the simultaneous handling of multiple MRZ recognition tasks, thereby enhancing throughput and efficiency