1. An image processing system for processing a gray scale image, comprising: a system for generating a first thresholded black white image from the gray scale image; a system for generating a second thresholded black white image from the gray scale image, wherein the second thresholded black white image is generated with a higher threshold value than the first thresholded black white image; a system for logically combining the first and second thresholded black white images to generate a composite image; a code line optical character recognition (OCR) system for applying a set of magnetic ink character recognition (MICR) rules to identify and capture a code line from the composite image, wherein the code line OCR system performs an OCR process on the code line to generate a set of code line data; and a recursive thresholding system for generating a set of composite images by altering a threshold value associated with at least one of the first and second thresholded black white images.