Difference between OMR and OCR

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.

Optical Character Reader (OCR) is used to convert different types of documents such as scanned paper documents, PDF files or images captured by a digital camera into machine-encoded text. It is widely used as a form of data entry from printed paper data records into electronic editable text which can be easily searched, stored etc.

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

S. No.	OMR	OCR
1.	It stands for Optical Mark Reader or Optical Mark Recognition.	It stands for Optical Character Reader or Optical Character Recognition.
2.	It is used to process data from printed forms.	It is used in scanning and converting different types of documents.
3.	It is easy to implement.	It is hard to implement as compared to OMR.
4.	It provides more accuracy as compared to OCR.	Its accuracy level is good.
5.	Storing documents is not possible.	It allows storing documents.
6.	It was first used in 1857 in telegraphs.	It was first used in 1914 to help blind people in reading.
7.	Its application is in surveys, answer sheets, questionnaires and ballots.	Its application is in google books, bank statements, business documents etc.
8.	It required timing tracks.	It does not require timing tracks.
9.	It is useful in grading, calculating marks, etc. It is the rapid method of data entry.	The visually impaired people find it useful. The text to speech can be used by them.
10.	It does not require an advanced level recognition engine when compared to OCR.	An advanced recognition engine is needed for OCR compared to OMR.