Amazon Web Services (AWS): Textract: Points to remember

Let's learn about Amazon Textract:

  1. Textract is a document analysis service that detects and extracts text, structured data and tables from images and scans of documents.

  2. Textract's ML models have been trained on millions of documents so that virtually any document type users upload is automatically recognized & processed for text extraction.

  3. Textract can detect Latin-script characters from the standard English alphabet and ASCII symbols.

  4. Textract currently supports PNG, JPEG, and PDF formats.

  5. Textract supports logging of the following actions as CloudTrail events - DetectDocumentText, AnalyzeDocument, StartDocumentTextDetection, StartDocumentAnalysis, GetDocumentTextDetection & GetDocumentAnalysis.

  6. Textract charges users based on the number of pages and images processed.

  7. Data from Textract is encrypted and stored at rest in the AWS region where users are using Textract.

  8. Textract is compliant with SOC-1, SOC-2, SOC-3, ISO 9001, ISO 27001, ISO 27017 and ISO 27018.

  9. Textract uses Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology to automatically detect printed text and numbers in a scan or rendering of a document, such as a legal document or a scan of a book.

  10. Textract enables users to detect key-value pairs in document images automatically so that they can retain the inherent context of the document without any manual intervention.

Image Retrieved From: https://aws.amazon.com/textract/features/

  1. Textract preserves the composition of data stored in tables during extraction.

  2. Textract is directly integrated with Amazon A2I so users can easily implement human review of text extracted from documents.

  3. Users can easily process millions of documents using Textract's text extraction APIs.

  4. With synchronous processing, Textract can analyze single-page documents for applications where latency is critical.

  5. Textract provides asynchronous operations to extend support to multipage documents.

  6. With AWS Batch, Textract is able to process multiple document images in a single operation.

  7. To detect text asynchronously, use StartDocumentTextDetection to start processing an input document file.

  8. To detect text synchronously, use the DetectDocumentText API operation and pass a document file as input.

  9. Textract analyzes documents and forms for relationships between detected text.

  10. Textract analysis operations return three categories of text extraction: text, forms and tables

Image Retrieved From: https://aws.amazon.com/textract/features/

  1. For Textract synchronous operations, users can use input documents that are stored in S3 bucket, or they can pass base64-encoded image bytes.

  2. Textract can detect selection elements such as option buttons and check boxes on a document page.

  3. Textract conforms to the AWS shared responsibility model, which includes regulations and guidelines for data protection.

  4. Textract communicates exclusively via HTTPS endpoints, which are supported in all Regions supported by Textract.

  5. Textract is protected by the AWS global network security procedures.

A Points to remember series by Piyush Jalan.