Difference between OMR and MICR

Optical Mark Reader (OMR) is the technology of electronically extracting data from marked fields such as checkboxes or bubbles from pre-printed forms. OMR technology scans a printed form and reads from predefined positions. It records the data where marks are made on the form. This is widely used for processing the large number of hand-filled forms which have to be processed quickly and with great accuracy.

Magnetic Ink Character Reader (MICR) can be understood as a technology used for the verification of checks and preventing forgery. The bottom of the cheques contains essential details like bank code, bank account number, document type indicator, cheque number etc printed using special ink. MICR characters are written in a special font which can be easily read by humans.

Below is a table of differentiation between Optical Mark Reader (OMR) and Magnetic Ink Character Reader (MICR):

	OMR	MICR
1.	It stands for Optical Mark Reader or Optical Mark Recognition.	It stands for Magnetic Ink Character Reader or Magnetic Ink Character Recognition.
2.	It is used to process data from printed forms.	It is used in the cheque verification process in financial institutions.
3.	It can scan any type of ink bubble to extract data.	It can only scan special ink which is used in writing MICR characters.
4.	It was first used in 1857 in telegraphs.	It was first used in the mid-1950.
5.	It was developed by Gravic Incorporation.	It was developed by Stanford Research Institute and General Electric Computer Laboratory.
6.	It is simple and easy to implement.	It is comparatively tough.
7.	Its application is in surveys, answer sheets, questionnaires and ballots.	Its application is in banks, income tax offices, financial institutions etc.
8.	It does not have any pre-defined font styles.	MICR has special font styles like CMC-7, E-138 etc.