1. An apparatus for optically reading a string of characters contained in a scanned image, comprising: an optical recognition unit configured to (i) extract a recognition image containing the string of characters and a neighboring image area from the scanned image, the recognition image containing a plurality of matching areas, and (ii) apply a recognition process to the recognition image by comparing each matching area with templates; and a matching area determination unit configured to determine and set a size of each of a second and subsequent matching areas to which the optical character recognition unit applies the recognition process based on a position at which a character in the string of characters in an immediately previous matching area was recognized; wherein, if a noise character is erroneously recognized and no character is recognized within a specific distance from the noise character, a next matching area is reset.