MPHILL SYNOPSIS

AUTOMATIC MCQS READING AND WRITTING BY USING

MOBILE CAMERA

Submitted by Mr. Muhammad Usman

Supervisor Dr. Shah Khalid

Assistant Professor
Deptt: of Computer Science & IT
University of Malakand

Department of Computer Science & IT

University of Malakand

Session 2021-2023
1 Introduction

Automatic multiple-choice questions (MCQ) in assessing student performance. Designed

properly, MCQ exams can be very effective and can be scored rapidly allowing quick

feedback to students. The traditional way to do these exams require hand-marked answers. A

modern way to implement these exams is to execute them online which is amenable to a high

degree of scoring automation. However, many teachers still prefer the traditional approach

and stay away from online exams for various reasons. Scoring for these exams can be done

automatically by using a mobile camrea and “OCR“ Optical Character Recognition. Optical

character recognition is a software used to convert physical paper document or an image to

an accessible electonic version with text.

Application

There is a lot of application of OCR like camScanner Microsoft lens and Google docs [1].

The banking industry uses OCR to process and verify paperwork for loan documents, deposit

checks, and other financial transactions [2]. The healthcare industry uses OCR to process

patient records, including treatments, tests, hospital records, and insurance payments [3,4].

Logistics companies use OCR to track package labels, invoices, receipts, and other documents

more efficiently. For example, the Foresight Group uses Amazon Textract to automate invoice

processing in SAP [5]. But we are using OCR for automatic MCQs reading and writing by

using mobile camera which is highly applicable in university exam and college exam as well

as school exam and also use for job testing. Student may use any types for marking (×, —,

▬, ⇉ etc.). It may be used for English, Urdu, Arabic, Chinese, Spanish and 100+ languages.

Computational time is less then image based recognition. It is efficient in term of lighting

condition. Student should waste more time by shading the bubbles but in our project just

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shade a small portion is enough for selection. Hand checking MCQs is very time consuming

but our project is marking MCQs by using camera and OCR techniques. Normal light

condition is necessary but OMR techniques depend upon the light condition.

Needs

The manual hand checking MCQs is very time consuming and difficult in checking most of

teacher tired in checking MCQs some of the researcher use optical mark recognition for

MCQs reading and writing but its use scanner and OMR machine and OMR sheet which is

expensive and most of university, colleges and school must not pay for this expenses.so we

introduce automatic MCQs generator by using mobile camera and OCR techniques which is

more friendly and less time consuming and no expenses occurs on this project but can be use

his own pocket mobile for scanning. OCR work on character recognition but OMR work on

optical mark recognition which is expensive and time consuming.

Literature Review:

A novel image processing based method to automatically marked printed multiple choice

answer sheet is presented. This method enable user to customize and print their own answer

sheet and user ordinary document scanner and computer to perform the marking as opposed

to relying on expensive specilized and restrictive answer sheet and optical mark

recognization. They take less time and use simple white paper and send feedback to the

student but scannner must be required and box must be full shaded and is expensive[6]. ].

Abbas proposed a techniques that on 15 question mcqs where where the anwer box must be

completly filled with dard heavy shading and the sheet must not be rotate by more then 45

degree by using OMR techniques.it take less time but box should be fillled dark heavy[7]. in

chinnasarm etal.‘s approach,the OMR paper is matched with model OMR paper to find the

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solution.it accuracy is 93%.it use OMR sheet which is expensive[8]. Another approach

which will mark student answer sheet automatically and return with in a very shot period of

time .this system consist of camrea and computer and can accept any type of marking on

bubble. it also take less time and expenses is 7000 to 15000.but it take 5 minutes per paper

and light condition and image condition will also matter on it.and taking different picture on

different company mobile give us different result and it set ratio of black and white pixel

(2:3) 45% to 55% of bubble recognizaition[9]. In karunanyake 1’s approch web based

camera is needed to capture image.so it doesnot decrease the cost and use OMR sheet[10].

Hui deng, feng wang proposed a system of low-cost (LCOMR) technique is presented.

Beides implementating all the of the treaditional OMR . LCOMR support plain sheet (70

gsm or less) and low printing questionnaire sheets. low-cost image based OMR techniqus

ansd the image can be obtained from any kind of sanner but the ink infiltration is the main

reason of recognition error. The plain paper of 70 gsm is easy to infiltrated and distoration of

the paper is critical issue[11].

From the above discussion it is clear that our proposed system is friendly and efficient and

low cost and less time consuming. The main that we can use OCR which is optical character

recognization and they use OMR techniques which optical mark recognization which is

expensive and time taken greater the OCR . OMR techniques is expensive as compare to our

propose system and time consuming as compare to our project.

2 Objectives

This study aims to enhance the manual marking and grading system by using OCR

techniques to automatically read and write MCQs through camera. The focus of the study is

to:

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 1. Make environment which take image of MCQs sheet and using pytesseract library which convert

image to text and using python language for making environment.

2. Search the marked options and match it with master copy options.

3. Adding marks to the correct option.

4. Store obtained marks along with his name of the student in file.

5. Taking experiment by our proposed system.

6. Generate result on basis of taking experiment.

3 Plan of Work

To successfully achieve the aim and objectives of this research work we are focused to

thoroughly review automatic MCQs reading and writing by using camera which can enhance

the examiners checking possibility and less time consuming as compare to manual system.

We have to plan to conduct some survey regarding automatic mobile camera for designing

the proposed frame work. The frame work will be implemented by using mobile camera and

python programming tools with pytesseract and cv2 library. Firt of all it convert image to text

by using OCR techniques and pytesseract library and using python language.after convetion

of text it seach the marked option and match it with master copy option then it add mark to

correct option . Experiment will be performed to validate the proposed frame work and data

will be collected to compare our result with proper benchmark to show the efficiency of our

research work.

4 Plan of Work

To successfully achieve the aim and objectives of this research work we are focused to

thoroughly review automatic MCQs reading and writing by using camera which can enhance

the examiners checking possibility and less time consuming as compare to manual system.

4
 We have to plan to conduct some survey regarding automatic mobile camera for designing

the proposed frame work. The frame work will be implemented by using mobile camera and

python programming tools with pytesseract and cv2 library. Experiment will be performed to

validate the proposed frame work and data will be collected to compare our result with

proper benchmark to show the efficiency of our research work.

References

1. V. K. Govindan, A. P. Shivaprasad, ―Character Recognition – A Review‖, Pattern

Recognition, Vol. 23. No. 7, pp. 671-683 (1990).

2. S. Srivastava (&) J. Priyadarshini S. Gopal S. Gupta H. S. Dayal Vellore Institute of

Technology, Optical Character Recognition on Bank Cheques Using 2D Convolution
Neural Network, Chennai, India e-mail: shriansh.srivastava2015@vit.azc.in

3. Davenport Thomas H., Kalakota, Ravi (2019) “The Potential for Artificial Intelligence in
Healthcare”. Future Healthc J. Jun; 6 (2): 94–98. DOI: 10.7861/futurehosp.6-2-944.

4. Saumitra Godbole;Dhananjay Joijode;Kshitij Kadam;Sameer Karoshi; (2020). Detection

of Medicine Information with Optical Character Recognition using Android . 2020 IEEE
Bangalore Humanitarian Technology Conference (B-HTC), (), –. doi:10.1109/b-
htc50970.2020.9298016.
5. Sigurd A. Berg*, Soo-Yeon Seo and Richard H.Y. So Application of optical character
recognition with Tesseract in logistics management,saberg@connect.ust.hk ,
syseo@connect.ust.hk,(2019)

6. Douglas Chai School of Engineering Edith Cowan University Perth, Australia

d.chai@ecu.edu.au

7. A. A. Abbas, “An automatic system to grade multiple choice questions paper based
exams,” Journal of University of Anbar for Pure Science, vol. 3, no. 1, pp. 174-181,
2009.

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8. K. Chinnasarn and Y. Rangsanseri, “An image-processing oriented optical mark reader,”
Proceedings of the SPIE 3808 Applications of Digital Image Processing XXII, Denver,
USA, pp. 702-708, Oct. 1999.

9. An Efficient, Cost Effective and User Friendly Approach for MCQs Treatment Ismail
Khan, Sami Ur Rahman, and Fakhre Alam (2018).

10. N. Karunanayake, “Omr sheet evaluation by web camera using template matching
approach,” International Journal for Research in Emerging Science and Technology, vol.
2, no. 8, 2015.

11. Hui Deng, Feng Wang, Bo Liang Computer Technology Appliance Key Lab of Yunnan
Province, Kunming University of Science and Technology, China, 650051
dh@kmust.edu.cn, wf@kmust.edu.cn, lb@cnlab.net.