OCR for math formulas

Question

I'm planning on creating a program to generate worked solutions for problems in a math text book by using OCR to pipe the equations into Wolfram Alpha and then displaying the step-by-step solutions from there. The equations wouldn't be too complex

I'm wondering if there is a suitable OCR program (preferably FOSS) or API that will be able to handle these equations.

Wolfram alpha already has the OCR feature so you can consider using everything from a single provider. — ssasa, Oct 23 '17 at 06:11
Possible duplicate of [OCR lib for math formulas](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3570220/ocr-lib-for-math-formulas) — Anderson Green, Sep 20 '18 at 02:45

score 8 · Accepted Answer · answered Jul 01 '18 at 07:26

8

Please take a look at Mathpix (https://mathpix.com/api.html). Disclaimer: I am the founder of Mathpix!

answered Jul 01 '18 at 07:26

nicodjimenez

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super fast robust API!~ – ina Feb 11 '22 at 11:51
unfortunately I have to put down a $20 one-time fee to use the API – azizbro Aug 21 '23 at 06:48

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Oct 20 '17 at 05:39

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Take a look at https://photomath.net/ they also offer a SDK. For a free OCR SDK consider https://github.com/tesseract-ocr.

answered Oct 20 '17 at 05:39

rmhrisk

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Photomath does not offer SDK – ssasa Oct 23 '17 at 06:08
ssasa, I see you are with photomath, my assumption was you used the https://microblink.com/en/technology SDK? – rmhrisk Oct 23 '17 at 18:29
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Yes, but still OCR extension to recognize math is not available as SDK or API. – ssasa Oct 26 '17 at 16:03

score 1 · Answer 3 · answered Mar 08 '21 at 13:32

https://github.com/falvaro/seshat this is exactly what you are looking for. But unfortunately, I am unable to compile it, as this code was written 7 years ago.

I Will update the answer if I am able to compile it.

You can have a trial for the above github repo at http://cat.prhlt.upv.es/mer/

CT_gogo · Answer 4 · 2022-05-25T11:36:41.743

There are some specialised math equation OCRs such as mathpix. They offer targetted solutions for math equations and thus I assume they should have pretty good effects on the simple equations you are tackling on.

On the other hand, I believe it is also possible to use OCR libraries such as Tesseract yourself if its just very specific math equations. You can refer to how to install the proper language for math in Tesseract here and how to use Tesseract and OpenCV here. They offer a wider range of coding flexibility as you may want to preprocess images, etc.

OCR for math formulas

4 Answers4