INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL FOR RESEARCH IN EMERGING SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY, VOLUME-2, ISSUE-8, AUG-2015 E-ISSN: 2349-7610 VOLUME-2, ISSUE-8, AUG-2015 COPYRIGHT © 2015 IJREST, ALL RIGHT RESERVED 40 OMR Sheet Evaluation by Web Camera Using Template Matching Approach Nalan Karunanayake 1 1 Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering Sri Lanka Institute of Information Technology Malabe, Sri Lanka 1 nalan.k@sliit.lk ABSTRACT The Optical Marking Recognition (OMR), or optical mark reading, is an automated data input process of capturing presence or absence of marked data (crosses, ticks and filled regions) on printed papers such as multiple choice examinations (MCQs) and surveys. Usually, a specific OMR machine is used to recognize the correctly marked data on a printed paper, which is highly expensive and requires a specialized technician to operate the machine accurately. This research proposes an accurate, timely and cost effective OMR sheet evaluation system based on a low priced web camera that can evaluate any format of MCQ paper efficiently. Firstly the selected region with all correct answers is marked on the printed paper separated manually and will be used as a template image in the matching process to extract the answered region of the student answer script. Then the cropped region of the answer sheet is matched with the template image to recognize the answers marked as correct or incorrect. Results obtain an accuracy of 97.6% over three different formats of MCQ papers. Keywords— Optical Mark Recognition, Template Matching, Low-Cost, Web-Camera, Image Processing. 1. INTRODUCTION Optical Mark Recognition (OMR), is the method of extracting deliberated data from printed document forms, such as check boxes, option buttons, fill-in fields and list boxes. Generally, OMR technology uses a scanner to scan the marked document and capture the predefined regions and record where the marks are present or absent. The marks on the printed paper are marked by using a pen or a pencil. The method of marking is straightforward. Simple ticks, crosses, fill in the bubbles and squares can be used to mark the relevant positions of the document. This OMR methodology is more convenient for applications in which plenty of human-marked printed forms which are needed to perform timely and with tremendous efficiency, for example, questionnaires, ballots, and surveys. A conventional and intermittent OMR application is a multiple choice question (MCQ) paper, mostly used for exams in schools and universities. The students marked the answers on the bubble sheet by filling the corresponding area of the paper, and the marked paper is put through a scanner (optical mark reader) to read the data from the marked space. However, there are a few drawbacks which limit the application of OMR technology [1]. The paper quality and the paper weight should be in the range of 90-110 gsm (grams per square meter) to process by the OMR machine. Such quality papers are more costly than the normal printed paper (A4 sheets). Then, the layout of the OMR sheet should be highly precise and in a particular format, whereas any other format of the OMR sheet cannot manipulate the same OMR machine. Finally, the OMR machine is a dedicated device which includes an OMR scanner, OMR software and dedicated OMR sheets, which are highly expensive, furthermore the machine can only be used to evaluate the OMR sheets. This research study proposes an OMR sheet evaluation system in real time by using a low-cost web camera and a template matching based image processing algorithm. The proposed algorithm supports any format of OMR sheets. Firstly, the