Automatic extraction of numeric strings in unconstrained handwritten document images

M. Mehdi Haji; Tien D. Bui; Ching Y. Suen

doi:10.1117/12.874706

24 January 2011 Automatic extraction of numeric strings in unconstrained handwritten document images

M. Mehdi Haji, Tien D. Bui, Ching Y. Suen

Proceedings Volume 7874, Document Recognition and Retrieval XVIII; 78740L (2011) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.874706
Event: IS&T/SPIE Electronic Imaging, 2011, San Francisco Airport, California, United States

Abstract

Numeric strings such as identification numbers carry vital pieces of information in documents. In this paper, we present a novel algorithm for automatic extraction of numeric strings in unconstrained handwritten document images. The algorithm has two main phases: pruning and verification. In the pruning phase, the algorithm first performs a new segment-merge procedure on each text line, and then using a new regularity measure, it prunes all sequences of characters that are unlikely to be numeric strings. The segment-merge procedure is composed of two modules: a new explicit character segmentation algorithm which is based on analysis of skeletal graphs and a merging algorithm which is based on graph partitioning. All the candidate sequences that pass the pruning phase are sent to a recognition-based verification phase for the final decision. The recognition is based on a coarse-to-fine approach using probabilistic RBF networks. We developed our algorithm for the processing of real-world documents where letters and digits may be connected or broken in a document. The effectiveness of the proposed approach is shown by extensive experiments done on a real-world database of 607 documents which contains handwritten, machine-printed and mixed documents with different types of layouts and levels of noise.

Citation Download Citation

M. Mehdi Haji, Tien D. Bui, and Ching Y. Suen "Automatic extraction of numeric strings in unconstrained handwritten document images", Proc. SPIE 7874, Document Recognition and Retrieval XVIII, 78740L (24 January 2011); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.874706

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