Attributed string matching by split-and-merge for on-line Chinese character recognition

Consecutive strokes of Chinese characters tend to be connected in fast writing, and this causes a problem for most stroke-based recognition approaches. A recognition scheme for recognizing cursive Chinese characters under the constraint of correct stroke writing orders is proposed. The recognition scheme consists of two phases: candidate character selection and detailed matching. In the former phase, an input script with N strokes is used to split the strokes of each reference character into N corresponding parts. In the latter phase, the connected input strokes are broken into multiple strokes under the guidance of candidate characters. In both phases, dynamic programming is employed for stroke or character matching. Good experimental results prove the feasibility of the proposed approach for cursive Chinese character recognition