Arabic handwritten word spotting using language models

With the ever-increasing amounts of published materials being made available, developing efficient means of locating target items has become a subject of significant interest. Among the approaches adopted for this purpose is word spotting, which enables the identification of documents through the use of pertinent keywords. This paper reports on an effective method of word spotting for Arabic handwritten documents that takes into consideration the nature of Arabic handwriting. Parts of Arabic Words (PAWs) form the basic components of this search process, and a hierarchical classifier (consisting of a set of classifiers each trained on a different part of the input pattern) is implemented. For the first time in Arabic word spotting, language models are incorporated into the process of reconstructing words from PAWs. Details of the method and promising experimental results are also presented.