A project on OMR in C#

Last week, We decided that this semester's college project should be on Optical Mark Recognization. A OMR system is a idle tool for collecting and analysing data from paper and web surveys, tests, assessments, evaluations and other forms.
After googling and burning mid night oil for 3 days, I have found that the following things are required
1) OMR sheets -- OMR forms are typically multiple choice sheets, which may or may not be made of special paper and ink.
2) Scanner -- Since I want to develop a software based system, it should support a wide variety of scanners.
3) Recognization engine -- Image processing and analysis has to be done here, and data collected should be forwarded for further processing.
4) OMR Sheets management system

a) Development of sheet designs

b) Master sheet or Answer sheet

c) Score calculation and analysis

PS: More points may be added later.

Now, I have decided to build the Recognization Engine first and my colleagues will help in developing the rest of the system.
I have developed some graphics intensive apps. Softwares with impressive uncoventional UI ( latest one using WPF and Expression Blend posted here) and also small 2-D games . It was never required before to play directly with the pixels of a image.