The feature extraction of Chinese character based on contour information

A new method, called central projection transformation, is proposed in this paper for feature extraction. From our experiments, the new method is found to be efficient in extracting features based on the contours of Chinese characters. Chinese characters have complex structures, and some of them are composed of several separate components, so several contours are embedded in a character. This may obstruct the application of the contour approach in recognizing Chinese characters. Central projection transformation can convert such a multi-contour pattern into a solid, convex pattern whose contour is a unique polygon. Most of the information of this new pattern is still located around its periphery. This approach can greatly simplify the processing of Chinese characters and other multi-contour patterns. It is also a powerful tool for processing Arabic, Japanese and other characters