Recognition of handwritten word: first and second order hidden Markov model based approach

The handwritten word recognition problem is modeled in the framework of the hidden Markov model (HMM). The states of HMM are identified with the letters of the alphabet. The optimum symbols are then generated experimentally using 15 different features. Both the first- and second-order HMMs are proposed for the recognition tasks. Using the existing statistical knowledge of English, the calculation scheme of the model parameters are immensely simplified. Once the model is established, the Viterbi algorithm is used to recognize the sequence of letters consisting the word. Some experimental results are also provided indicating the success of the scheme