101 research outputs found
Character Recognition
Character recognition is one of the pattern recognition technologies that are most widely used in practical applications. This book presents recent advances that are relevant to character recognition, from technical topics such as image processing, feature extraction or classification, to new applications including human-computer interfaces. The goal of this book is to provide a reference source for academic research and for professionals working in the character recognition field
Advances in Character Recognition
This book presents advances in character recognition, and it consists of 12 chapters that cover wide range of topics on different aspects of character recognition. Hopefully, this book will serve as a reference source for academic research, for professionals working in the character recognition field and for all interested in the subject
Off-line Arabic Handwriting Recognition System Using Fast Wavelet Transform
In this research, off-line handwriting recognition system for Arabic alphabet is
introduced. The system contains three main stages: preprocessing, segmentation and
recognition stage. In the preprocessing stage, Radon transform was used in the design
of algorithms for page, line and word skew correction as well as for word slant
correction. In the segmentation stage, Hough transform approach was used for line
extraction. For line to words and word to characters segmentation, a statistical method
using mathematic representation of the lines and words binary image was used.
Unlike most of current handwriting recognition system, our system simulates the
human mechanism for image recognition, where images are encoded and saved in
memory as groups according to their similarity to each other. Characters are
decomposed into a coefficient vectors, using fast wavelet transform, then, vectors,
that represent a character in different possible shapes, are saved as groups with one
representative for each group. The recognition is achieved by comparing a vector of
the character to be recognized with group representatives.
Experiments showed that the proposed system is able to achieve the recognition task
with 90.26% of accuracy. The system needs only 3.41 seconds a most to recognize a
single character in a text of 15 lines where each line has 10 words on average
Feature design and lexicon reduction for efficient offline handwriting recognition
This thesis establishes a pattern recognition framework for offline word recognition systems. It focuses on the image level features because they greatly influence the recognition performance. In particular, we consider two complementary aspects of prominent features impact: lexicon reduction and the actual recognition. The first aspect, lexicon reduction, consists in the design of a weak classifier which outputs a set of candidate word hypotheses given a word image. Its main purpose is to reduce the recognition computational time while maintaining (or even improving) the recognition rate. The second aspect is the actual recognition system itself. In fact, several features exist in the literature based on different fields of research, but no consensus exists concerning the most promising ones. The goal of the proposed framework is to improve our understanding of relevant features in order to build better recognition systems. For this purpose, we addressed two specific problems: 1) feature design for lexicon reduction (application to Arabic script), and 2) feature evaluation for cursive handwriting recognition (application to Latin and Arabic scripts).
Few methods exist for lexicon reduction in Arabic script, unlike Latin script. Existing methods use salient features of Arabic words such as the number of subwords and diacritics, but totally ignore the shape of the subwords. Therefore, our first goal is to perform lexicon reductionn based on subwords shape. Our approach is based on shape indexing, where the shape of a query subword is compared to a labeled database of sample subwords. For efficient comparison with a low computational overhead, we proposed the weighted topological signature vector (W-TSV) framework, where the subword shape is modeled as a weighted directed acyclic graph (DAG) from which the W-TSV vector is extracted for efficient indexing. The main contributions of this work are to extend the existing TSV framework to weighted DAG and to propose a shape indexing approach for lexicon reduction. Good performance for lexicon reduction is achieved for Arabic subwords. Nevertheless, the performance remains modest for Arabic words.
Considering the results of our first work on Arabic lexicon reduction, we propose to build a new index for better performance at the word level. The subword shape and the number of subwords and diacritics are all important components of Arabic word shape. We therefore propose the Arabic word descriptor (AWD) which integrates all the aforementioned components. It is built in two steps. First, a structural descriptor (SD) is computed for each connected component (CC) of the word image. It describes the CC shape using the bag-of-words model, where each visual word represents a different local shape structure. Then, the AWD is formed by concatenating the SDs using an efficient heuristic, implicitly discriminating between subwords and diacritics. In the context of lexicon reduction, the AWD is used to index a reference database. The main contribution of this work is the design of the AWD, which integrates lowlevel cues (subword shape structure) and symbolic information (subword counts and diacritics) into a single descriptor. The proposed method has a low computational overhead, it is simple to implement and it provides state-of-the-art performance for lexicon reduction on two Arabic databases, namely the Ibn Sina database of subwords and the IFN/ENIT database of words.
The last part of this thesis focuses on features for word recognition. A large body of features exist in the literature, each of them being motivated by different fields, such as pattern recognition, computer vision or machine learning. Identifying the most promising approaches would improve the design of the next generation of features. Nevertheless, because they are based on different concepts, it is difficult to compare them on a theoretical ground and efficient empirical tools are needed. Therefore, the last objective of the thesis is to provide a method for feature evaluation that assesses the strength and complementarity of existing features. A combination scheme has been designed for this purpose, in which each feature is evaluated through a reference recognition system, based on recurrent neural networks. More precisely, each feature is represented by an agent, which is an instance of the recognition system trained with that feature. The decisions of all the agents are combined using a weighted vote. The weights are jointly optimized during a training phase in order to increase the weighted vote of the true word label. Therefore, they reflect the strength and complementarity of the agents and their features for the given task. Finally, they are converted into a numerical score assigned to each feature, which is easy to interpret under this combination model. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first feature evaluation method able to quantify the importance of each feature, instead of providing a ranking based on the recognition rate. Five state-of-the-art features have been tested, and our results provide interesting insight for future feature design
Pattern Recognition
A wealth of advanced pattern recognition algorithms are emerging from the interdiscipline between technologies of effective visual features and the human-brain cognition process. Effective visual features are made possible through the rapid developments in appropriate sensor equipments, novel filter designs, and viable information processing architectures. While the understanding of human-brain cognition process broadens the way in which the computer can perform pattern recognition tasks. The present book is intended to collect representative researches around the globe focusing on low-level vision, filter design, features and image descriptors, data mining and analysis, and biologically inspired algorithms. The 27 chapters coved in this book disclose recent advances and new ideas in promoting the techniques, technology and applications of pattern recognition
Real-time hand printed character recognition on a DSP chip
Thesis (M.S.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 1995.Includes bibliographical references (p. 119-120).by Christopher Isaac Chang.M.S
Recognition of off-line handwritten cursive text
The author presents novel algorithms to design unconstrained handwriting
recognition systems organized in three parts:
In Part One, novel algorithms are presented for processing of Arabic text prior to
recognition. Algorithms are described to convert a thinned image of a stroke to a straight
line approximation. Novel heuristic algorithms and novel theorems are presented to
determine start and end vertices of an off-line image of a stroke. A straight line
approximation of an off-line stroke is converted to a one-dimensional representation by
a novel algorithm which aims to recover the original sequence of writing. The resulting
ordering of the stroke segments is a suitable preprocessed representation for subsequent
handwriting recognition algorithms as it helps to segment the stroke. The algorithm was
tested against one data set of isolated handwritten characters and another data set of
cursive handwriting, each provided by 20 subjects, and has been 91.9% and 91.8%
successful for these two data sets, respectively.
In Part Two, an entirely novel fuzzy set-sequential machine character recognition
system is presented. Fuzzy sequential machines are defined to work as recognizers of
handwritten strokes. An algorithm to obtain a deterministic fuzzy sequential machine from
a stroke representation, that is capable of recognizing that stroke and its variants, is
presented. An algorithm is developed to merge two fuzzy machines into one machine. The
learning algorithm is a combination of many described algorithms. The system was tested
against isolated handwritten characters provided by 20 subjects resulting in 95.8%
recognition rate which is encouraging and shows that the system is highly flexible in
dealing with shape and size variations.
In Part Three, also an entirely novel text recognition system, capable of recognizing
off-line handwritten Arabic cursive text having a high variability is presented. This system
is an extension of the above recognition system. Tokens are extracted from a onedimensional
representation of a stroke. Fuzzy sequential machines are defined to work as
recognizers of tokens. It is shown how to obtain a deterministic fuzzy sequential machine
from a token representation that is capable'of recognizing that token and its variants. An
algorithm for token learning is presented. The tokens of a stroke are re-combined to
meaningful strings of tokens. Algorithms to recognize and learn token strings are
described. The. recognition stage uses algorithms of the learning stage. The process of
extracting the best set of basic shapes which represent the best set of token strings that
constitute an unknown stroke is described. A method is developed to extract lines from
pages of handwritten text, arrange main strokes of extracted lines in the same order as
they were written, and present secondary strokes to main strokes. Presented secondary
strokes are combined with basic shapes to obtain the final characters by formulating and
solving assignment problems for this purpose. Some secondary strokes which remain
unassigned are individually manipulated. The system was tested against the handwritings
of 20 subjects yielding overall subword and character recognition rates of 55.4% and
51.1%, respectively
An incremental clustering and associative learning architecture for intelligent robotics
The ability to learn from the environment and memorise the acquired knowledge is
essential for robots to become autonomous and versatile artificial companions. This
thesis proposes a novel learning and memory architecture for robots, which performs
associative learning and recall of sensory and actuator patterns. The approach
avoids the inclusion of task-specific expert knowledge and can deal with any kind of
multi-dimensional real-valued data, apart from being tolerant to noise and supporting
incremental learning. The proposed architecture integrates two machine learning
methods: a topology learning algorithm that performs incremental clustering, and
an associative memory model that learns relationship information based on the
co-occurrence of inputs.
The evaluations of both the topology learning algorithm and the associative
memory model involved the memorisation of high-dimensional visual data as well as
the association of symbolic data, presented simultaneously and sequentially. Moreover,
the document analyses the results of two experiments in which the entire architecture
was evaluated regarding its associative and incremental learning capabilities. One
experiment comprised an incremental learning task with visual patterns and text
labels, which was performed both in a simulated scenario and with a real robot. In a
second experiment a robot learned to recognise visual patterns in the form of road
signs and associated them with di erent con gurations of its arm joints.
The thesis also discusses several learning-related aspects of the architecture
and highlights strengths and weaknesses of the proposed approach. The developed
architecture and corresponding ndings contribute to the domains of machine learning
and intelligent robotics
Towards General-Purpose Representation Learning of Polygonal Geometries
Neural network representation learning for spatial data is a common need for
geographic artificial intelligence (GeoAI) problems. In recent years, many
advancements have been made in representation learning for points, polylines,
and networks, whereas little progress has been made for polygons, especially
complex polygonal geometries. In this work, we focus on developing a
general-purpose polygon encoding model, which can encode a polygonal geometry
(with or without holes, single or multipolygons) into an embedding space. The
result embeddings can be leveraged directly (or finetuned) for downstream tasks
such as shape classification, spatial relation prediction, and so on. To
achieve model generalizability guarantees, we identify a few desirable
properties: loop origin invariance, trivial vertex invariance, part permutation
invariance, and topology awareness. We explore two different designs for the
encoder: one derives all representations in the spatial domain; the other
leverages spectral domain representations. For the spatial domain approach, we
propose ResNet1D, a 1D CNN-based polygon encoder, which uses circular padding
to achieve loop origin invariance on simple polygons. For the spectral domain
approach, we develop NUFTspec based on Non-Uniform Fourier Transformation
(NUFT), which naturally satisfies all the desired properties. We conduct
experiments on two tasks: 1) shape classification based on MNIST; 2) spatial
relation prediction based on two new datasets - DBSR-46K and DBSR-cplx46K. Our
results show that NUFTspec and ResNet1D outperform multiple existing baselines
with significant margins. While ResNet1D suffers from model performance
degradation after shape-invariance geometry modifications, NUFTspec is very
robust to these modifications due to the nature of the NUFT.Comment: 58 pages, 20 figures, Accepted to GeoInformatic
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