Segmentation of Japanese handwritten characters using peripheral feature analysis

A method of character segmentation of Japanese handwritten characters has been developed. It is effective especially in character recognition with the over-segmentation process. The method is based on the credibility measurement of each presegmented pattern for being a true character by analyzing peripheral features such as gaps between patterns and widths and heights of patterns. A heuristic statistical method is applied to the analysis. Experimental results show that the developed method increases the accuracy of character segmentation. It is effective especially when no linguistic feedback to segmentation is available and/or the character classifier ability is not high enough. In such cases, the recognition accuracy is increased from 30% to 70% by the new segmentation method