diff --git a/routes/web.php b/routes/web.php
index c296db3..52489c0 100644
--- a/routes/web.php
+++ b/routes/web.php
@@ -52,6 +52,13 @@ use thiagoalessio\TesseractOCR\TesseractOCR;
                 ->config('tessedit_char_whitelist', '0123456789ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz')
                 ->run();
 
+        $text = trim($text); // remove whitespace
+
+        if (empty($text)) {
+            // No text found
+            return response()->json(['success' => true, 'text' => 'Text not found']);
+        }
+
             //return response()->json(['success' => true, 'text' => $text]);
             $lines = preg_split('/\r\n|\r|\n/', $text);
             $serials = array_filter(array_map('trim', $lines), fn($line) => preg_match('/^[A-Za-z0-9]+$/', $line));