A novel method for reconstructing degraded digits

This paper presents a new method for reconstructing degraded, or broken, digits. The proposed method uses inertia based techniques to exam the digit´s stroke where degradation may be found and then extrapolate the stroke in order to reconstruct the digit. The main goal is to create strokes that remain as natural as possible, maintaining digit integrity. Experiments were performed using an artificially created degraded digit set, where the original digits were extracted from the NIST SD19 digit database. The proposed method succeeds in reconstructing the digits by extrapolating the strokes after attaining pertinent information from the digits themselves. The results were analyzed using automatic character recognition and the hit rate increased to 94%.