1. The act of identifying someone or something on the basis of a past sighting or experience, the ability to do this, or the fact of being identified through having been seen or experienced before: Although Greg passed by Grace without any sign of recognition when he got off the bus, this occurred because his thoughts were focused on getting to work on time and he was close to being late.
2. Appreciation of the value of an achievement: Jim's pioneering work never got the recognition it deserved.
3. Acknowledgment of the existence or validity of something: Jack and Jill need recognition from the committee in order to proceed with the celebration.
4. Permission given by someone chairing a meeting to another person who has asked to speak: The head of the English department gave recognition to Mr. Smith who wanted to offer his opinion on the subject of grading.
5. The formal acceptance by one country of the independent and legal status of another country: Guatemala’s recognition of Belize ended the territorial controversy in 1991.
6. Something given or awarded as a token of acknowledgment or gratitude: Lynn was presented with a trophy as recognition of being the best improved violinist in the school orchestra.
7. The sensing and conversion of data into a machine-readable form by a computer: It is possible that handwriting can be transformed into a PC or laptop by certain means of recognition or coding.
8. In biology, the ability of molecules with complementary shapes to attach to one another: Enzyme-substrate and antibody-antigen interactions are two forms of recognition in the field of science.

1. That branch of character recognition concerned with the automatic identification of handwritten or printed characters by any of various photoelectric methods.
2. A method for the machine-reading of typeset, typed, and, in some cases, hand-printed letters, numbers, and symbols using optical sensing and a computer.

The light reflected by a printed text; for example, is recorded as patterns of light and dark areas by an array of photoelectric cells in a optical scanner.

A biometric technology that provides for the scanning, comparison, and identification of fingerprints without the traditional need for ink and paper.

An optical scanning and recognition system is used in conjunction with a matching system to enable efficient authentication for secure spaces and devices. Like other finger scanning technologies, electro-optical fingerprint recognition makes it possible to quickly and accurately compare a given fingerprint image to thousands of stored images.

Electro-optical fingerprint scanners are generally designed to be portable, easy to use, and physically rugged. The devices are becoming more widely used as an alternative to passwords for consumer electronics or as part of a two-factor authentication system where more stringent security is required.

The fingerprint is optically scanned directly from the finger and the resulting image is focused onto a small chip. The chip converts the focused image into a digital file that can be processed, stored, and compared with other fingerprint images.

The high-resolution digital images can be processed like any other scanned images, eliminating problems caused by aliasing (also called jaggies) and making it possible to quickly compare a fingerprint image with other fingerprint images in a large database.