A new benchmark on the recognition of handwritten Bangla and Farsi numeral characters

The recognition of Indian and Arabic handwriting is drawing increasing attention in recent years. To test the promise of existing handwritten numeral recognition methods and provide new benchmarks for future research, this paper presents some results of handwritten Bangla and Farsi numeral recognition on binary and gray-scale images. For recognition on gray-scale images, we propose a process with proper image pre-processing and feature extraction. In experiments on three databases, ISI Bangla numerals, CENPARMI Farsi numerals, and IFHCDB Farsi numerals, we have achieved very high accuracies using various recognition methods. The highest test accuracies on the three databases are 99.40%, 99.16%, and 99.73%, respectively. We justified the benefit of recognition on gray-scale images against binary images, compared some implementation choices of gradient direction feature extraction, some advanced normalization and classification methods.     

Neural-network classifiers for recognizing totally unconstrainedhandwritten numerals

Artificial neural networks have been recognized as a powerful tool for pattern classification problems, but a number of researchers have also suggested that straightforward neural-network approaches to pattern recognition are largely inadequate for difficult problems such as handwritten numeral recognition. In this paper, we present three sophisticated neural-network classifiers to solve complex pattern recognition problems: multiple multilayer perceptron (MLP) classifier, hidden Markov model (HMM)/MLP hybrid classifier, and structure-adaptive self-organizing map (SOM) classifier. In order to verify the superiority of the proposed classifiers, experiments were performed with the unconstrained handwritten numeral database of Concordia University, Montreal, Canada. The three methods have produced 97.35%, 96.55%, and 96.05% of the recognition rates, respectively, which are better than those of several previous methods reported in the literature on the same database.     

基于方向线素特征的孟加拉手写数字识别

根据孟加拉数字的特点,将方向线素特征应用于孟加拉手写数字识另怕g特征提取,并辅以端点和交叉点特征,采用BP神经网络作分类器进行识别。利用从实际盂加拉信封图像中采集到的手写体数字作为样本进行实验,结果表明,该方法的识别率和可靠性分别达到97．63％和98．77％。     

Handwritten Bangla numeral recognition system and its application to postal automation

A recognition system for handwritten Bangla numerals and its application to automatic letter sorting machine for Bangladesh Post is presented. The system consists of preprocessing, feature extraction, recognition and integration. Based on the theories of principal component analysis (PCA), two novel approaches are proposed for recognizing handwritten Bangla numerals. One is the image reconstruction recognition approach, and the other is the direction feature extraction approach combined with PCA and SVM. By examining the handwritten Bangla numeral data captured from real Bangladesh letters, the experimental results show that our proposed approaches are effective. To meet performance requirements of automatic letter sorting machine, we integrate the results of the two proposed approaches with one conventional PCA approach. It has been found that the recognition result achieved by the integrated system is more reliable than that by one method alone. The average recognition rate, error rate and reliability achieved by the integrated system are 95.05%, 0.93% and 99.03%, respectively. Experiments demonstrate that the integrated system also meets speed requirement.     

Multiresolution recognition of unconstrained handwritten numerals with wavelet transform and multilayer cluster neural network

In this paper, we propose a new scheme for multiresolution recognition of unconstrained handwritten numerals using wavelet transform and a simple multilayer cluster neural network. The proposed scheme consists of two stages: a feature extraction stage for extracting multiresolution features with wavelet transform, and a classification stage for classifying unconstrained handwritten numerals with a simple multilayer cluster neural network. In order to verify the performance of the proposed scheme, experiments with unconstrained handwritten numeral database of Concordia University of Canada, Electro-Technical Laboratory of Japan, and Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute of Korea were performed. The error rates were 3.20%, 0.83%, and 0.75%, respectively. These results showed that the proposed scheme is very robust in terms of various writing styles and sizes.     

SVM-based hierarchical architectures for handwritten Bangla character recognition

We propose support vector machine (SVM) based hierarchical classification schemes for recognition of handwritten Bangla characters. A comparative study is made among multilayer perceptron, radial basis function network and SVM classifier for this 45 class recognition problem. SVM classifier is found to outperform the other classifiers. A fusion scheme using the three classifiers is proposed which is marginally better than SVM classifier. It is observed that there are groups of characters having similar shapes. These groups are determined in two different ways on the basis of the confusion matrix obtained from SVM classifier. In the former, the groups are disjoint while they are overlapped in the latter. Another grouping scheme is proposed based on the confusion matrix obtained from neural gas algorithm. Groups are disjoint here. Three different two-stage hierarchical learning architectures (HLAs) are proposed using the three grouping schemes. An unknown character image is classified into a group in the first stage. The second stage recognizes the class within this group. Performances of the HLA schemes are found to be better than single stage classification schemes. The HLA scheme with overlapped groups outperforms the other two HLA schemes.     

Off-line recognition of totally unconstrained handwritten numeralsusing multilayer cluster neural network

In this paper, we propose a new scheme for off-line recognition of totally unconstrained handwritten numerals using a simple multilayer cluster neural network trained with the backpropagation algorithm and show that the use of genetic algorithms avoids the problem of finding local minima in training the multilayer cluster neural network with gradient descent technique, and improves the recognition rates. In the proposed scheme, Kirsch masks are adopted for extracting feature vectors and a three-layer cluster neural network with five independent subnetworks is developed for classifying similar numerals efficiently. In order to verify the performance of the proposed multilayer cluster neural network, experiments with handwritten numeral database of Concordia University of Canada, that of Electro-Technical Laboratory of Japan, and that of Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute of Korea were performed. For the case of determining the initial weights using a genetic algorithm, 97.10%, 99.12%, and 99.40% correct recognition rates were obtained, respectively     

基于混合特征的孟加拉手写体数字识别

根据孟加拉手写体数字的特点,用Kirsch算子提取象素的水平、垂直、右对角线以及左对角线的特征矢量,并与字符图像的密度特征相结合,采用BP算法训练的MLP网络作分类器进行识别。最后,用从实际孟加拉信封图像中采集到的手写体数字作样本进行实验,达到了96.1%的识别率。     

基于统计和结构特征的手写数字识别研究

针对目前手写数字识别精度不高的问题,通过对手写数字图像的研究,提出了基于手写数字图像的空间、旋转、层次和结构特性的特征提取方法.该方法把手写数字的统计和结构特征结合起来,以特征提取方法为基础,利用LibSVM算法对手写数字特征进行了训练和识别.通过实验给出了各个参数的推荐值,利用推荐参数值,手写数字MNIST字体库的识别率高达99.3333％.实验结果表明了该算法在识别手写数字上的有效性和准确性.     

Off-line, handwritten numeral recognition by perturbation method

This paper presents a new approach to off-line, handwritten numeral recognition. From the concept of perturbation due to writing habits and instruments, we propose a recognition method which is able to account for a variety of distortions due to eccentric handwriting. We tested our method on two worldwide standard databases of isolated numerals, namely CEDAR and NIST, and obtained 99.09 percent and 99.54 percent correct recognition rates at no-rejection level respectively. The latter result was obtained by testing on more than 170000 numerals     

Handwritten numeral recognition based on simplified structural classification and fuzzy memberships

Previous handwritten numeral recognition algorithms applied structural classification to extract geometric primitives that characterize each image, and then utilized artificial intelligence methods, like neural network or fuzzy memberships, to classify the images. We propose a handwritten numeral recognition methodology based on simplified structural classification, by using a much smaller set of primitive types, and fuzzy memberships. More specifically, based on three kinds of feature points, we first extract five kinds of primitive segments for each image. A fuzzy membership function is then used to estimate the likelihood of these primitives being close to the two vertical boundaries of the image. Finally, a tree-like classifier based on the extracted feature points, primitives and fuzzy memberships is applied to classify the numerals. With our system, handwritten numerals in NIST Special Database 19 are recognized with correct rate between 87.33% and 88.72%.     

A genetic framework using contextual knowledge for segmentation and recognition of handwritten numeral strings

For the first time, a genetic framework using contextual knowledge is proposed for segmentation and recognition of unconstrained handwritten numeral strings. New algorithms have been developed to locate feature points on the string image, and to generate possible segmentation hypotheses. A genetic representation scheme is utilized to show the space of all segmentation hypotheses (chromosomes). For the evaluation of segmentation hypotheses, a novel evaluation scheme is introduced, in order to improve the outlier resistance of the system. Our genetic algorithm tries to search and evolve the population of segmentation hypotheses, and to find the one with the highest segmentation/recognition confidence. The NIST NSTRING SD19 and CENPARMI databases were used to evaluate the performance of our proposed method. Our experiments showed that proper use of contextual knowledge in segmentation, evaluation and search greatly improves the overall performance of the system. On average, our system was able to obtain correct recognition rates of 95.28% and 96.42% on handwritten numeral strings using neural network and support vector classifiers, respectively. These results compare favorably with the ones reported in the literature.     

Learning Sparse Feature Representations Using Probabilistic Quadtrees and Deep Belief Nets

Learning sparse feature representations is a useful instrument for solving an unsupervised learning problem. In this paper, we present three labeled handwritten digit datasets, collectively called n-MNIST by adding noise to the MNIST dataset, and three labeled datasets formed by adding noise to the offline Bangla numeral database. Then we propose a novel framework for the classification of handwritten digits that learns sparse representations using probabilistic quadtrees and Deep Belief Nets. On the MNIST, n-MNIST and noisy Bangla datasets, our framework shows promising results and outperforms traditional Deep Belief Networks.     

基于BP神经网络的手写数字识别算法研究

讨论了一个手写数字识别系统的原理及其实现。特征提取的方法是:计算字体轮廓的曲率特征,并在计算曲率的过程中使用了B样条函数;对曲率进行了大小和平移规整化,这样得到的曲率具有大小和方向的不变性。为了得到更紧凑的特征,采用了小波对其进行降维。采用了BP神经网络作为分类器,实验结果表明,对于字形相似的数字也达到了较高的识别率。还简介了识别系统的模块设计和界面设计。