An ensemble classifier for offline cursive character recognition using multiple feature extraction techniques

This paper presents a novel approach for cursive character recognition by using multiple feature extraction algorithms and a classifier ensemble. Several feature extraction techniques, using different approaches, are extracted and evaluated. Two techniques, Modified Edge Maps and Multi Zoning, are proposed. The former one presents the best overall result. Based on the results, a combination of the feature sets is proposed in order to achieve high recognition performance. This combination is motivated by the observation that the feature sets are both, independent and complementary. The ensemble is performed by combining the outputs generated by the classifier in each feature set separately. Both fixed and trained combination rules are evaluated using the C-Cube database. A trained combination scheme using a MLP network as combiner achieves the best results which is also the best results for the C-Cube database by a good margin.