Cursive character handwriting recognition system and method

Abstract

A cursive character handwriting recognition system includes image processing means for processing an image of a handwritten word of one or more characters and classification means for determining an optimal string of one or more characters as composing the imaged word. The processing means segments the characters such that each character is made up of one or more segments and determines a sequence of the segments using an over-segmentation-relabeling algorithm. The system also includes feature extraction means for deriving a feature vector to represent feature information of one segment or a combination of several consecutive segments. The over-segmentation-relabeling algorithm places certain segments considered as diacritics or small segments so as to immediately precede or follow a segment of the associated main character body. Additionally, the system also includes classification means that processes each string of segments and outputs a number of optimal strings which could be matched against a given lexicon.