683 research outputs found
Deep Adaptive Learning for Writer Identification based on Single Handwritten Word Images
There are two types of information in each handwritten word image: explicit
information which can be easily read or derived directly, such as lexical
content or word length, and implicit attributes such as the author's identity.
Whether features learned by a neural network for one task can be used for
another task remains an open question. In this paper, we present a deep
adaptive learning method for writer identification based on single-word images
using multi-task learning. An auxiliary task is added to the training process
to enforce the emergence of reusable features. Our proposed method transfers
the benefits of the learned features of a convolutional neural network from an
auxiliary task such as explicit content recognition to the main task of writer
identification in a single procedure. Specifically, we propose a new adaptive
convolutional layer to exploit the learned deep features. A multi-task neural
network with one or several adaptive convolutional layers is trained
end-to-end, to exploit robust generic features for a specific main task, i.e.,
writer identification. Three auxiliary tasks, corresponding to three explicit
attributes of handwritten word images (lexical content, word length and
character attributes), are evaluated. Experimental results on two benchmark
datasets show that the proposed deep adaptive learning method can improve the
performance of writer identification based on single-word images, compared to
non-adaptive and simple linear-adaptive approaches.Comment: Under view of Pattern Recognitio
Writer identification approach based on bag of words with OBI features
Handwriter identification aims to simplify the task of forensic experts by providing them with semi-automated tools in order to enable them to narrow down the search to determine the final identification of an unknown handwritten sample. An identification algorithm aims to produce a list of predicted writers of the unknown handwritten sample ranked in terms of confidence measure metrics for use by the forensic expert will make the final decision.
Most existing handwriter identification systems use either statistical or model-based approaches. To further improve the performances this paper proposes to deploy a combination of both approaches using Oriented Basic Image features and the concept of graphemes codebook. To reduce the resulting high dimensionality of the feature vector a Kernel Principal Component Analysis has been used. To gauge the effectiveness of the proposed method a performance analysis, using IAM dataset for English handwriting and ICFHR 2012 dataset for Arabic handwriting, has been carried out. The results obtained achieved an accuracy of 96% thus demonstrating its superiority when compared against similar techniques
Automatic handwriter identification using advanced machine learning
Handwriter identification a challenging problem especially for forensic investigation. This topic has received significant attention from the research community and several handwriter identification systems were developed for various applications including forensic science, document analysis and investigation of the historical documents. This work is part of an investigation to develop new tools and methods for Arabic palaeography, which is is the study of handwritten material, particularly ancient manuscripts with missing writers, dates, and/or places. In particular, the main aim of this research project is to investigate and develop new techniques and algorithms for the classification and analysis of ancient handwritten documents to support palaeographic studies.
Three contributions were proposed in this research. The first is concerned with the development of a text line extraction algorithm on colour and greyscale historical manuscripts. The idea uses a modified bilateral filtering approach to adaptively smooth the images while still preserving the edges through a nonlinear combination of neighboring image values. The proposed algorithm aims to compute a median and a separating seam and has been validated to deal with both greyscale and colour historical documents using different datasets. The results obtained suggest that our proposed technique yields attractive results when compared against a few similar algorithms.
The second contribution proposes to deploy a combination of Oriented Basic Image features and the concept of graphemes codebook in order to improve the recognition performances. The proposed algorithm is capable to effectively extract the most distinguishing handwriter’s patterns. The idea consists of judiciously combining a multiscale feature extraction with the concept of grapheme to allow for the extraction of several discriminating features such as handwriting curvature, direction, wrinkliness and various edge-based features. The technique was validated for identifying handwriters using both Arabic and English writings captured as scanned images using the IAM dataset for English handwriting and ICFHR 2012 dataset for Arabic handwriting. The results obtained clearly demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method when compared against some similar techniques.
The third contribution is concerned with an offline handwriter identification approach based on the convolutional neural network technology. At the first stage, the Alex-Net architecture was employed to learn image features (handwritten scripts) and the features obtained from the fully connected layers of the model. Then, a Support vector machine classifier is deployed to classify the writing styles of the various handwriters. In this way, the test scripts can be classified by the CNN training model for further classification. The proposed approach was evaluated based on Arabic Historical datasets; Islamic Heritage Project (IHP) and Qatar National Library (QNL). The obtained results demonstrated that the proposed model achieved superior performances when compared to some similar method
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
The Effects of Character-Level Data Augmentation on Style-Based Dating of Historical Manuscripts
Identifying the production dates of historical manuscripts is one of the main goals for paleographers when studying ancient documents. Automatized methods can provide paleographers with objective tools to estimate dates more accurately. Previously, statistical features have been used to date digitized historical manuscripts based on the hypothesis that handwriting styles change over periods. However, the sparse availability of such documents poses a challenge in obtaining robust systems. Hence, the research of this article explores the influence of data augmentation on the dating of historical manuscripts. Linear Support Vector Machines were trained with k-fold cross-validation on textural and grapheme-based features extracted from historical manuscripts of different collections, including the Medieval Paleographical Scale, early Aramaic manuscripts, and the Dead Sea Scrolls. Results show that training models with augmented data improve the performance of historical manuscripts datin g by 1% - 3% in cumulative scores. Additionally, this indicates further enhancement possibilities by considering models specific to the features and the documents’ script
Writer identification using curvature-free features
Feature engineering takes a very important role in writer identification which has been widely studied in the literature. Previous works have shown that the joint feature distribution of two properties can improve the performance. The joint feature distribution makes feature relationships explicit instead of roping that a trained classifier picks up a non-linear relation present in the data. In this paper, we propose two novel and curvature-free features: run-lengths of local binary pattern (LBPruns) and cloud of line distribution (COLD) features for writer identification. The LBPruns is the joint distribution of the traditional run-length and local binary pattern (LBP) methods, which computes the run-lengths of local binary patterns on both binarized and gray scale images. The COLD feature is the joint distribution of the relation between orientation and length of line segments obtained from writing contours in handwritten documents. Our proposed LBPruns and COLD are textural-based curvature-free features and capture the line information of handwritten texts instead of the curvature information. The combination of the LBPruns and COLD features provides a significant improvement on the CERUG data set, handwritten documents on which contain a large number of irregular-curvature strokes. The results of proposed features evaluated on other two widely used data sets (Firemaker and IAM) demonstrate promising results
Word Searching in Scene Image and Video Frame in Multi-Script Scenario using Dynamic Shape Coding
Retrieval of text information from natural scene images and video frames is a
challenging task due to its inherent problems like complex character shapes,
low resolution, background noise, etc. Available OCR systems often fail to
retrieve such information in scene/video frames. Keyword spotting, an
alternative way to retrieve information, performs efficient text searching in
such scenarios. However, current word spotting techniques in scene/video images
are script-specific and they are mainly developed for Latin script. This paper
presents a novel word spotting framework using dynamic shape coding for text
retrieval in natural scene image and video frames. The framework is designed to
search query keyword from multiple scripts with the help of on-the-fly
script-wise keyword generation for the corresponding script. We have used a
two-stage word spotting approach using Hidden Markov Model (HMM) to detect the
translated keyword in a given text line by identifying the script of the line.
A novel unsupervised dynamic shape coding based scheme has been used to group
similar shape characters to avoid confusion and to improve text alignment.
Next, the hypotheses locations are verified to improve retrieval performance.
To evaluate the proposed system for searching keyword from natural scene image
and video frames, we have considered two popular Indic scripts such as Bangla
(Bengali) and Devanagari along with English. Inspired by the zone-wise
recognition approach in Indic scripts[1], zone-wise text information has been
used to improve the traditional word spotting performance in Indic scripts. For
our experiment, a dataset consisting of images of different scenes and video
frames of English, Bangla and Devanagari scripts were considered. The results
obtained showed the effectiveness of our proposed word spotting approach.Comment: Multimedia Tools and Applications, Springe
Offline handwritten signature identification using adaptive window positioning techniques
The paper presents to address this challenge, we have proposed the use of
Adaptive Window Positioning technique which focuses on not just the meaning of
the handwritten signature but also on the individuality of the writer. This
innovative technique divides the handwritten signature into 13 small windows of
size nxn(13x13).This size should be large enough to contain ample information
about the style of the author and small enough to ensure a good identification
performance.The process was tested with a GPDS data set containing 4870
signature samples from 90 different writers by comparing the robust features of
the test signature with that of the user signature using an appropriate
classifier. Experimental results reveal that adaptive window positioning
technique proved to be the efficient and reliable method for accurate signature
feature extraction for the identification of offline handwritten signatures.The
contribution of this technique can be used to detect signatures signed under
emotional duress.Comment: 13 pages, 9 figures, 2 tables, Offline Handwritten Signature, GPDS
dataset, Verification, Identification, Adaptive window positionin
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