Automated marking of printed multiple choice answer sheets

A novel image processing based method to automatically mark printed multiple choice answer sheets is presented. This new method enables users to customize and print their own answer sheets and uses ordinary document scanner and computer to perform the marking as opposed to relying on expensive, specialized and restrictive answer sheets and optical mark recognition scanners. It can also annotate the scanned answer sheet images with feedback and send back to students via email, while compiling the assessment results for the assessor. Experiments show the proposed method can mark as fast as 1.4 seconds per sheet with 100% accuracy.