A computer implemented method for adaptive optical character recognition on a document with distorted characters includes performing a distortion-correction transformation on a segmented character of the document assuming the segmented character to be a candidate character. The method further includes comparing the transformed segmented character to the candidate character by calculating a comparison score. If the calculated score is within a predetermined range, the segmented character is identified with the candidate character. The method may be implemented in either of computer hardware configured to perform the method, or in computer software embodied in a non-transitory, tangible, computer-readable storage medium. Also disclosed are corresponding computer program product and data processing system.