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• This paper proposes an approach that uses single pixel imaging to obtain images with light interference removed for improving OCR recognition rate without image post-processing. • It is the first time that single pixel imaging is proposed to remove light interference for improving the character recognition rate to the best of the authors' knowledge. • When the character recognition rate of the picture obtained by traditional imaging is 0% by adding a serious interference pattern, the counterpart by single pixel imaging is 95.45%. Optical Character Recognition (OCR), which is generally based on figure recognition, is mainly effective for extracting text from pictures. However, it is a challenge to maintain a high recognition rate without being affected by light interference in a complicated environment. To reduce the light interference for improving the OCR recognition rate, this article proposes a method utilizing single-pixel imaging to obtain images without light interference for character recognition. Unlike the traditional CCD/CMOS-based imaging relying on image post-processing to eliminate interference, the method proposed without the need of any image post-processing which is a cumbersome process and often leads to a deterioration in the quality of the obtained images. Theoretical analysis shows that single-pixel imaging can eliminate the light interference in certain conditions completely. The verification experiments demonstrate that single-pixel imaging can only image the target and ignore an introduced highlighted stripe, whereas traditional CCD/CMOS-based imaging can not eliminate the effects of the stripe without image post-processing. Comparison experiments in contrast with the character recognition rate of the picture obtained from traditional imaging demonstrate the counterpart obtained from single-pixel imaging increased from 88.64% to 97.73%. The evaluation index of correlation and image quality illustrates that the picture obtained by single-pixel imaging has a higher correlation with the target picture and better image quality than the counterpart of the picture obtained from traditional imaging. When the character recognition rate of the picture obtained by traditional imaging is 0% by adding a serious interference pattern from a projector, the counterpart by single-pixel imaging is 95.45%. This approach provides a welcome boost to the development of the application of single-pixel imaging in character recognition by reducing the light interference, which provides a potential direction for the development of OCR to obtain higher recognition success rate under a complex environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]