Structural character recognition using simulated annealing

The authors propose a structural character recognition method using simulated annealing, where the dissimilarity between an input and a reference pattern is evaluated by matching stroke and loop objects extracted from these patterns. This method can compute the matching at a high-speed. It can also avoid an incorrect matching problem when a object is divided into several objects in a broken character, by generating a hypothesis for an object´s integration in the matching process. They have applied this method to handwritten digit recognition. The experimental results reveal that this method has the same degree of recognition rate and about 1/10 of the computing time compared with a conventional matching method using probabilistic relaxation. Moreover, generating a hypothesis for an object´s integration is effective for dealing with broken characters