Handwritten Character Recognition Based on the Specificity and the Singularity of the Arabic Language

A good Arabic handwritten recognition system must consider the characteristics of Arabic letters which can be explicit such as the presence of diacritics or implicit such as the baseline information (a virtual line on which cursive text are aligned and/join). In order to find an adequate method of features extraction, we have taken into consideration the nature of the Arabic characters. The paper investigate two methods based on two different visions: one describes the image in terms of the distribution of pixels, and the other describes it in terms of local patterns. Spatial Distribution of Pixels (SDP) is used according to the first vision; whereas Local Binary Patterns (LBP) are used for the second one. Tested on the Arabic portion of the Isolated Farsi Handwritten Character Database (IFHCDB) and using neural networks as a classifier, SDP achieve a recognition rate around 94% while LBP achieve a recognition rate of about 96%

Grid’5000 Based Large Scale OCR Using the DTW Algorithm: Case of the Arabic Cursive Writing

International audienc

THE RELIGIOUS AND SOCIAL SIGNIFICANCE OF METHODIST TICKETS, AND ASSOCIATED PRACTICES OF COLLECTING AND RECOLLECTING, 1741-2017

Among all the paper ephemera surviving from eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century Britain, the humble Methodist ticket has attracted little attention from scholars and collectors. Issued quarterly to members as a testimonial to religious conduct, many still exist, reflecting the sheer quantity produced by 1850, and the significance of keeping practices, where Methodist habits were distinctive. This article explores first the origin and spread of tickets primarily within British Methodism, but also noting its trans-oceanic contexts. Apparently inconsequential objects, they shaped experience and knowledge, illuminating eighteenth-century religious life, female participation, and plebeian agency. Discussion then turns to patterns of saving and memorialization that from the 1740s preserved Methodists’ tickets. Such practices extended the life-cycle of the individual ticket and created the accidents of its survival, giving it new uses as an institutional resource. In recovering the dead, it acquired nostalgic value, but other capacities were lost and forgotten. The ticket’s origins, uses, and preservation intersect with major historical and historiographical currents to complicate established narratives of print, urban association, and commerce, and to present alternative understandings of collecting.Peer reviewe

Forensic Analysis of Ink on Documents Using Direct Analyte-Probed Nanoextraction Coupled Techniques

Analzying questioned documents in a nondestructive nature has been an issue for the forensic science community. Using nondestructive techniques such as video spectral comparator does not give reliable information due to the variations in gray or color levels that are distinguished differently by analysts. Destructive techniques such as chromatography give dependable, qualitative and quantitative, information but involves altering the evidentiary value of these questioned documents. The paradox of document examination becomes a problem when document evidence is involved, especially when trying to preserve its evidentiary value and critical data is needed. Thus, a nondestructive technique has been developed to solve the loopholes in document examinations. Direct analyte-probed nanoextraction (DAPNe) is a nanomanipulation technique that extracts ink directly off the document for further examination. A watermark is left, at most, post-extraction. DAPNe utilizes a tip emitter, pre-filled with a solvent, which is controlled in x-, y-, and z-coordinates via joystick controller and aspirates/extracts using a pressure injector. The versatility of this technique lies within the solvent chemistry and its capability to be coupled to various types of instrumentation. The extraction solvent can be altered to target specific components in the ink. For example, a chelator may be added to target metal ions found in ancient inks or methanol may be added to target certain organic resins and binding agents found in modern inks. In this study, DAPNe has been coupled to nanospray ionization mass spectrometry, fluorescence microscopy, Raman spectroscopy, matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization mass spectrometry, and laser ablation to solve questioned document concerns in the area of falsified or forged documents, redacted documents, and aging studies

Document preprocessing and fuzzy unsupervised character classification

This dissertation presents document preprocessing and fuzzy unsupervised character classification for automatically reading daily-received office documents that have complex layout structures, such as multiple columns and mixed-mode contents of texts, graphics and half-tone pictures. First, the block segmentation algorithm is performed based on a simple two-step run-length smoothing to decompose a document into single-mode blocks. Next, the block classification is performed based on the clustering rules to classify each block into one of the types such as text, horizontal or vertical lines, graphics, and pictures. The mean white-to-black transition is shown as an invariance for textual blocks, and is useful for block discrimination. A fuzzy model for unsupervised character classification is designed to improve the robustness, correctness, and speed of the character recognition system. The classification procedures are divided into two stages. The first stage separates the characters into seven typographical categories based on word structures of a text line. The second stage uses pattern matching to classify the characters in each category into a set of fuzzy prototypes based on a nonlinear weighted similarity function. A fuzzy model of unsupervised character classification, which is more natural in the representation of prototypes for character matching, is defined and the weighted fuzzy similarity measure is explored. The characteristics of the fuzzy model are discussed and used in speeding up the classification process. After classification, the character recognition procedure is simply applied on the limited versions of the fuzzy prototypes. To avoid information loss and extra distortion, an topography-based approach is proposed to apply directly on the fuzzy prototypes to extract the skeletons. First, a convolution by a bell-shaped function is performed to obtain a smooth surface. Second, the ridge points are extracted by rule-based topographic analysis of the structure. Third, a membership function is assigned to ridge points with values indicating the degrees of membership with respect to the skeleton of an object. Finally, the significant ridge points are linked to form strokes of skeleton, and the clues of eigenvalue variation are used to deal with degradation and preserve connectivity. Experimental results show that our algorithm can reduce the deformation of junction points and correctly extract the whole skeleton although a character is broken into pieces. For some characters merged together, the breaking candidates can be easily located by searching for the saddle points. A pruning algorithm is then applied on each breaking position. At last, a multiple context confirmation can be applied to increase the reliability of breaking hypotheses

Print to pixel: how can the cultural implications of mediated images and text be examined using creative practice?

Information in the twenty-first century is at our fingertips in an instant. Through the technology of the mobile phone, computer, and television, we are alerted to information of international, national, local, and personal significance. The aim of this research is to establish that creative practice can provide a cogent forum with which to interrogate the cultural implications of mediated images and text in the twenty first Century. This exegesis Print to pixel explores the interrelationship between the political and cultural values as identified in the various codes within western mainstream news media. The cultural implications of the shift from print to digital technology leading to the immediacy of access to information, is crucial to this research. I focus on the media coverage of September 11 2001 as an example of the use of codes, framing and repetition in western mainstream news media. The coverage of the reaction to September 11 2001 exemplified the potency of images to communicate a particular political and social agenda. The creative component of my research consists of associated extracted images and text from western mainstream news media. The act of extracting and freezing images from the seemingly continuous flow of digital information is key to this research, allowing art gallery visitors to focus and re-engage with too readily dismissed information on screen. I examine the future of print by including digital and traditional print techniques, on paper, on screens and in books, in an investigation of the links between the different technologies used to report the events and consequences of September 11 2001. The combination of theory and practice in the form of reflexive praxis is the methodology I use to develop my findings. Reflexive praxis offers a method for arts practice, as a communicative act, to create a new balance by which the artist/researcher adopts processes acknowledging individual and social influences by applying theoretical rigour to draw new conclusions and propose new questions. Jurgen Habermas refers to the validity claims that are made in the communicative act and states that “The validity claims that we raise in conversation – that is, when we say something with conviction – transcend this specific conversational context, pointing to something beyond the spatiotemporal ambit of the occasion” (1990, p. 19). He refers to the conversation as an opportunity to make a statement that goes beyond the immediate interaction and leads to wider implications. I regard the exhibition of my artworks as providing that ‘conversational context’ in which I raise questions that may have unpredictable implications as the viewer brings to the work their own life influences and prejudices. Therefore, applying reflexive praxis by “reflecting upon, and reconstructing the constructed world,” I constantly analyse the propositions being made through my work and assume “a process of meaning making, and that meaning and its processes are contingent upon a cultural and social environment” (Crouch, 2007, p. 112). It is only through the manifestation of my research ideas in the form of exhibited artworks that an evaluation through reflexive praxis occurs: considering how works are interpreted according to the context in which they are shown, what relationships with other works reveal and whether the artworks successfully address the research aims