Amazon Textract Specialized2018年〜
An OCR service that automatically extracts text, tables, and form data from documents
What It Does
Amazon Textract is an OCR service that automatically extracts text, table structures, and form key-value pairs from scanned images and PDFs. Unlike traditional OCR that only recognizes text positions and characters, Textract understands table row/column structures and form label-value relationships.
Use Cases
Extracting data from invoices and receipts, automated contract processing, reading information from ID documents, digitizing medical records, and auto-filling tax documents.
Everyday Analogy
Think of a skilled office assistant. Hand them a paper document and they don't just read the text - they understand table structures, correctly identify the name written in the "Name" field, and enter it into the database.
What Is Textract?
Amazon Textract is an AI service that automatically extracts data from documents. It takes images or PDFs stored in S3 as input and returns text, tables, and form data in a structured format. It also supports handwriting recognition, processing both printed and handwritten documents.
Extraction Features
Textract offers multiple extraction capabilities. DetectDocumentText extracts text lines and words. AnalyzeDocument's Tables feature recognizes table row/column structures. The Forms feature extracts form label-value pairs. Queries extracts answers to natural language questions from documents. AnalyzeExpense specializes in receipt and invoice extraction. For real-world examples and best practices on extraction features, related books on Amazon are a useful reference.
Getting Started
Try the features with sample documents in the Textract console. Upload a document to S3 and call the AnalyzeDocument API via the AWS SDK to get extraction results in JSON format. For processing large volumes of documents, use the asynchronous API (StartDocumentAnalysis).
Things to Watch Out For
- Extraction accuracy depends on document quality (resolution, contrast). Low-quality scans may reduce accuracy
- Pay-per-use based on page count and features used (text extraction, table analysis, Queries, etc.)
