Multiple word segmentation with interactive look-up for cursive script recognition

Cursive script recognition is commonly based on finding letters within a word and recognizing them separately. The segmentation process is ambiguous and difficult. A method which combines word segmentation and letter recognition with lexical look-up in order to cope with segmentation ambiguity is presented. Words are first segmented into small elements which are then put together using a database of their possible combinations to produce alternative segmentations. Letter recognition is performed on each letter candidate and lexical look-up is applied, interactively, to prune illegal word recognition results. Lexical look-up is used to postulate word endings for partially recognized words. This provides the means of catering for words with sloppy endings, some misspellings and recovering from some recognition errors. An online cursive script recognition system, based on the above method, is described and evaluated