Novel geometric features for off-line writer identification

Writer identification is an important field in forensic document examination. Typically, a writer identification system consists of two main steps: feature extraction and matching and the performance depends significantly on the feature extraction step. In this paper, we propose a set of novel geometrical features that are able to characterize different writers. These features include direction, curvature, and tortuosity. We also propose an improvement of the edge-based directional and chain code-based features. The proposed methods are applicable to Arabic and English handwriting. We have also studied several methods for computing the distance between feature vectors when comparing two writers. Evaluation of the methods is performed using both the IAM handwriting database and the QUWI database for each individual feature reaching Top1 identification rates of 82 and 87 % in those two datasets, respectively. The accuracies achieved by Kernel Discriminant Analysis (KDA) are significantly higher than those observed before feature-level writer identification was implemented. The results demonstrate the effectiveness of the improved versions of both chain-code features and edge-based directional features.     

Extraction and analysis of forensic document examiner features used for writer identification

In this paper we present a study of structural features of handwriting extracted from three characters “d”, “y”, and “f” and grapheme “th”. The features used are based on the standard features used by forensic document examiners. The process of feature extraction is presented along with the results. Analysis of the usefulness of features was conducted via searching the optimal feature sets using the wrapper method. A neural network was used as a classifier and a genetic algorithm was used to search for optimal feature sets. It is shown that most of the structural micro features studied, do possess discriminative power, which justifies their use in forensic analysis of handwriting. The results also show that the grapheme possessed significantly higher discriminating power than any of the three single characters studied, which supports the opinion that a character form is affected by its adjacent characters.     

A writer identification system for on-line whiteboard data

In this paper we address the task of writer identification of on-line handwriting captured from a whiteboard. Different sets of features are extracted from the recorded data and used to train a text and language independent on-line writer identification system. The system is based on Gaussian mixture models (GMMs) which provide a powerful yet simple means of representing the distribution of the features extracted from the handwritten text. The training data of all writers are used to train a universal background model (UBM) from which a client specific model is obtained by adaptation. Different sets of features are described and evaluated in this work. The system is tested using text from 200 different writers. A writer identification rate of 98.56% on the paragraph and of 88.96% on the text line level is achieved.     

Text-independent writer identification and verification using textural and allographic features

The identification of a person on the basis of scanned images of handwriting is a useful biometric modality with application in forensic and historic document analysis and constitutes an exemplary study area within the research field of behavioral biometrics. We developed new and very effective techniques for automatic writer identification and verification that use probability distribution functions (PDFs) extracted from the handwriting images to characterize writer individuality. A defining property of our methods is that they are designed to be independent of the textual content of the handwritten samples. Our methods operate at two levels of analysis: the texture level and the character-shape (allograph) level. At the texture level, we use contour-based joint directional PDFs that encode orientation and curvature information to give an intimate characterization of individual handwriting style. In our analysis at the allograph level, the writer is considered to be characterized by a stochastic pattern generator of ink-trace fragments, or graphemes. The PDF of these simple shapes in a given handwriting sample is characteristic for the writer and is computed using a common shape codebook obtained by grapheme clustering. Combining multiple features (directional, grapheme, and run-length PDFs) yields increased writer identification and verification performance. The proposed methods are applicable to free-style handwriting (both cursive and isolated) and have practical feasibility, under the assumption that a few text lines of handwritten material are available in order to obtain reliable probability estimates     

Music—A language for typesetting music scores

This paper describes a language which has been devised to facilitate the inclusion of printed music in the output of a typesetting system. The music program acts as a preprocessor to troff, which is the typesetting program associated with the UNIX system. The design of the music input language has concentrated on the simplicity of the process of transcribing and typing in data from a standard music score, yet still allowing some of the complex requirements of serious music scores to be handled.     

Automatic writer identification using connected-component contours and edge-based features of uppercase Western script

In this paper, a new technique for offline writer identification is presented, using connected-component contours (COCOCOs or CO3s) in uppercase handwritten samples. In our model, the writer is considered to be characterized by a stochastic pattern generator, producing a family of connected components for the uppercase character set. Using a codebook of CO3s from an independent training set of 100 writers, the probability-density function (PDF) of CO3s was computed for an independent test set containing 150 unseen writers. Results revealed a high-sensitivity of the CO3 PDF for identifying individual writers on the basis of a single sentence of uppercase characters. The proposed automatic approach bridges the gap between image-statistics approaches on one end and manually measured allograph features of individual characters on the other end. Combining the CO3 PDF with an independent edge-based orientation and curvature PDF yielded very high correct identification rates.     

Feature learning and encoding for multi-script writer identification

International Journal on Document Analysis and Recognition (IJDAR) - Writer identification from handwriting samples has been an interesting research problem for the pattern recognition community in...     

Individuality of alphabet knowledge in online writer identification

Allograph prototype approaches for writer identification have been gaining popularity recently due to its simplicity and promising identification rates. Character prototypes that are used as allographs produce a consistent set of templates that models the handwriting styles of writers, thereby allowing high accuracies to be attained. We hypothesize that the alphabet knowledge inherent in such character prototypes can provide additional writer information pertaining to their styles of writing and their identities. This paper utilizes a character prototype approach to establish evidence that knowledge of the alphabet offers additional clues which help in the writer identification process. This paper then introduces an alphabet information coefficient (AIC) to better exploit such alphabet knowledge for writer identification. Our experiments showed an increase in writer identification accuracy from 66.0 to 87.0% on a database of 200 reference writers when alphabet knowledge was used. Experiments related to the reduction in dimensionality of the writer identification system are also reported. Our results show that the discriminative power of the alphabet can be used to reduce the complexity while maintaining the same level of performance for the writer identification system.     

离线手写体笔迹鉴别方法研究

笔迹鉴别可分为在线、离线两种。主要针对现有的离线手写体笔迹鉴别方法展开研究,重点集中在笔迹图像预处理、特征提取、分类、鉴别过程和效果评价等方面,探讨了各种方法的优点和不足,并提出了今后一些可能的研究方向和内容。     

Scoresynth: a system for the synthesis of music scores based onPetri nets and a music algebra

The authors show that they have chosen and organized symbols depending on instrumental needs within common music notations. The new kind of representation they propose makes up a conceptual music framework with as many different levels of abstraction as the musician needs. It allows them to explicitly describe and process what they call music objects (both traditional and nontraditional music objects), by which they mean anything that could have a musical meaning and can be thought of as an entity with a name and some relationship with other music objects. They describe a tool called Scoresynth, which uses Petri nets to describe, process, and synthesize music scores. They examine Scoresynth's features and explain how it works     

Interval valued symbolic representation of writer dependent features for online signature verification

This work focusses on exploitation of the notion of writer dependent parameters for online signature verification. Writer dependent parameters namely features, decision threshold and feature dimension have been well exploited for effective verification. For each writer, a subset of the original set of features are selected using different filter based feature selection criteria. This is in contrast to writer independent approaches which work on a common set of features for all writers. Once features for each writer are selected, they are represented in the form of an interval valued symbolic feature vector. Number of features and the decision threshold to be used for each writer during verification are decided based on the equal error rate (EER) estimated with only the signatures considered for training the system. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach, extensive experiments are conducted on both MCYT (DB1) and MCYT (DB2) benchmarking online signature datasets consisting of signatures of 100 and 330 individuals respectively using the available 100 global parametric features.     

Automatic writer identification framework for online handwritten documents using character prototypes

This paper proposes an automatic text-independent writer identification framework that integrates an industrial handwriting recognition system, which is used to perform an automatic segmentation of an online handwritten document at the character level. Subsequently, a fuzzy c-means approach is adopted to estimate statistical distributions of character prototypes on an alphabet basis. These distributions model the unique handwriting styles of the writers. The proposed system attained an accuracy of 99.2% when retrieved from a database of 120 writers. The only limitation is that a minimum length of text needs to be present in the document in order for sufficient accuracy to be achieved. We have found that this minimum length of text is about 160 characters or approximately equivalent to 3 lines of text. In addition, the discriminative power of different alphabets on the accuracy is also reported.     

A text-independent Persian writer identification based on feature relation graph (FRG)

The style of people's handwriting is a biometric feature that is used in person authentication. In this paper, we have proposed a text independent method for Persian writer identification. In the proposed method, pattern based features are extracted from data using Gabor and XGabor filter. The extracted features are represented for each person by using a graph that is called FRG (feature relation graph). This graph is constructed using relations between extracted features by employing a fuzzy method. The fuzzy method determines the similarity between features extracted from different handwritten instances of each person. In the identification phase, a graph similarity approach is employed to determine the similarity of the FRG generated from the test data and the FRGs generated by training data. The experimental results were satisfactory and the proposed method got about 100% accuracy on a dataset with 100 writers when enough training data was used. However, this method has been applied on Persian handwritings but we believe it can be extended on other languages especially in data representation and classification parts.