HMM-KNN word recognition engine for bank cheque processing

Describes the mixed HMM-KNN word recognition module of a bank cheque processing system developed at CENPARMI. It uses a combination of 2 segmentation free word recognition schemes. The first scheme uses a set of global features associated to a modified K nearest neighbour classifier; while the second one uses a set of directional contour features as input to an HMM. The system has been designed to be modular and independent of specific languages as in Canada one has to deal with at least 2 languages, namely English and French. It can be easily adapted to read other European languages based on the Roman alphabet. The system is continuously tested on data from the local phone company, and we report here the results on a database of approximately 4,500 cheques