Contour tracing for isolated Sinhala handwritten character recognition

Sinhala is the language of the Sinhalese. Most Sinhala language characters have a complex shape. As a result, many writing styles are used in Sinhala writing which makes recognition difficult. In this paper, a contour tracing technique is applied for isolated Sinhala handwritten character recognition. To improve the recognition rate, distance profiles have been incorporated. The proposed technique was tested for 35 commonly used characters in the Sinhala alphabet. Handwritten samples are collected from three different writers. A maximum recognition rate of 100%, a minimum of 9.1%, median of 48.5% and a mean of 53% was achieved with this technique.