Recognition of unconstrained handwritten numeral strings by composite segmentation method

Describes a scheme for recognizing unconstrained handwritten numeral strings by a composite segmentation method which combines both recognition-free and recognition-based segmentation methods. A digit group detector has been designed to separate touching digits from isolated digits by the recognition-free segmentation method. Subsequently touching digits are segmented by prioritized segmentation points accomplished by analyzing the ligature and touching types. Four special kinds of candidate segmentation points and six touching types are defined to obtain more stable segmentation points. To evaluate the proposed method, we have experimented with 1,500 numeral strings of the NIST SD19 database and obtained a recognition rate of 91.8%