US 11,869,264 B2
Pre-processing a table in a document for natural language processing
Scott Carrier, New Hill, NC (US); Ritwik Ray, Apex, NC (US); Jonathan Chapin Rand, Ann Arbor, MI (US); Jothilakshmi Sirangimoorthy, Canton, MI (US); Hui Wang, Ann Arbor, MI (US); and Robert Fredenburg, Kalamazoo, MI (US)
Assigned to INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS MACHINES CORPORATION, Armonk, NY (US)
Filed by INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS MACHINES CORPORATION, Armonk, NY (US)
Filed on Jan. 13, 2023, as Appl. No. 18/154,665.
Application 18/154,665 is a continuation of application No. 17/155,077, filed on Jan. 21, 2021, granted, now 11,587,347.
Prior Publication US 2023/0154220 A1, May 18, 2023
This patent is subject to a terminal disclaimer.
Int. Cl. G06F 17/00 (2019.01); G06V 30/412 (2022.01); G06F 3/0482 (2013.01); G06F 40/237 (2020.01); G06F 40/40 (2020.01); G06V 30/416 (2022.01)
CPC G06V 30/412 (2022.01) [G06F 3/0482 (2013.01); G06F 40/237 (2020.01); G06F 40/40 (2020.01); G06V 30/416 (2022.01)] 20 Claims
OG exemplary drawing
 
1. A computer program product for natural language processing (NLP) of a document including a table, wherein the computer program product comprises a computer readable storage medium having computer readable program instructions executed by a processor to perform operations, the operations comprising:
processing table items in a table in a document to determine an initial set of a main element comprising an entity whose value is to be extracted, a conditional element that refines the entity, and a value element comprising a value for the entity from the processed table items;
producing a modified set of the main element, conditional element, and value element from the initial set; and
providing the modified set of the main element, conditional element, and the value element to an NLP engine to perform natural language processing of the document including the table, using the modified set of the main element, conditional element, and the value element to interpret the table.