A fuzzy based classification scheme for unconstrained handwritten Devanagari character recognition

The large data set and similar structural features of the characters in Devanagari script demand a highly efficient classification and recognition system. This paper presents a novel approach for the recognition of unconstrained handwritten Devanagari characters. The system is based on multi-stage classification scheme. The classification stages categorize the characters into smaller groups. The classification is done using two stages, first stage is based on fuzzy inference system and second stage is based on structural parameters. The fuzzy system improves the classification over crisp classification. The classified characters are passed to the feature extraction stage. The final stage implements feed forward neural network for character recognition. The recognition accuracy achieved by the proposed method is 96.95%.