How to translate license key scans into text (similar to captcha solution)?

Question

Text recognising

I sell digital activation keys for software and video games. Sometimes such keys come from suppliers not in text, but in scans. That is images. Volumes are large. Here is a part of such a scan:

This image must be translated into text. The output format will be something like XXXX-XXXX-XXXX
Various software, including ABBYY FineReader, failed (((
I came up with the idea to use captcha recognition services, because images are quite similar to captcha.
The problem is that such a code can be sent It looks quite familiar to those who activate games, for example, on Steam, that is, if the rewriter understands something, then with a high degree of probability I will give someone an expensive gift :)
How to be in such a situation? Maybe there is some software that can cut this image for me, and then put it back together?
I will be glad to any ideas.

Answer 1

You may need a neuron.
First divide the image into parts by hyphen, then into letters.
Prepare these letters for the neuron one by one, learn the network. You try how it recognizes individual letters. If it succeeds with a high probability, then write an algorithm for dividing the image into letters and sending it for recognition, returning the letter and compiling a text code.
If the image is always even, the letters do not dance, do not change in size and position, then this will make the task easier.

Answer 2

Try preprocessing before recognition: erosion or opening with a round core in imagemagick, for example, will merge all the points of the symbol.