OPtical Character Recognition

As a part of my final year project Im planning to shape a Fuzzy based Optical character Recognition system. For that purpose I plan to use a 16 or 8 bit microcontroller for the fuzzy processing module, but im still undecided on how to implement the actual optical data reading system or the scanner. I cannot use a commercial scanner for certain reasons. A photodetector arry is a possible solution, but CAN ANYONE SUGGEST A COMMERCIALLY AVAILABLE PHOTODETECTOR ARRAY IC. Texas instruments TLS 214 would have been an ideal choice, but they have stoopped production and discontinued it. Any ideas as to how i could implement the Scanner?