Stroke order and stroke number free on-line Chinese character recognition using attributed relational graph matching

A structural method for on-line recognition of Chinese characters is proposed, which is stroke order and stroke number free. Both input characters and the model characters are represented with complete attributed relational graphs (ARGs). A new optimal matching measure between two ARGs is defined. Classification of an input character can be implemented by matching its ARG against every ARG of the model base. The matching procedure is formulated as a search problem of finding the minimum cost path in a state space tree, using the A* algorithm. In order to speed up the search of the A*, besides a heuristic estimate, a novel strategy that utilizes the geometric position information of stroke segments of Chinese characters to prune the tree is employed. The efficiency of our method is demonstrated by the promising experimental results