HMM Based Approach for Handwritten Arabic Word Recognition Using the IFN/ENIT- Database

  • Authors:
  • Mario Pechwitz;Volker Maergner

  • Affiliations:
  • -;-

  • Venue:
  • ICDAR '03 Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference on Document Analysis and Recognition - Volume 2
  • Year:
  • 2003

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Abstract

An offline recognition system for Arabic handwrittenwords is presented. The recognition system is based ona semi-continuous 1-dimensional HMM. From each binaryword image normalization parameters were estimated. Firstheight, length, and baseline skew are normalized, then featuresare collected using a sliding window approach. Thispaper presents these methods in more detail. Some parameterswere modified and the consequent effect on the recognitionresults are discussed. Significant tests were performedusing the new IFN/ENIT - database of handwritten Arabicwords. The comprehensive database consists of 26459Arabic words (Tunisian town/village names) handwrittenby 411 different writers and is free for non-commercial research.In the performed tests we achieved maximal recognitionrates of about 89% on a word level.