Segmentation of Offline Handwritten Bengali Script

Character segmentation has long been one of the most critical areas of optical character recognition process. Through this operation, an image of a sequence of characters, which may be connected in some cases, is decomposed into sub-images of individual alphabetic symbols. In this paper, segmentation of cursive handwritten script of world's fourth popular language, Bengali, is considered. Unlike English script, Bengali handwritten characters and its components often encircle the main character, making the conventional segmentation methodologies inapplicable. Experimental results, using the proposed segmentation technique, on sample cursive handwritten data containing 218 ideal segmentation points show a success rate of 97.7%. Further feature-analysis on these segments may lead to actual recognition of handwritten cursive Bengali script.Comment: Proceedings of 28th IEEE ACE, pp. 171-174, December 2002, Science City, Kolkat