Knowledge-based English cursive script segmentation

Knowledge concerning the structure of some prominent English letters, as well as the structural characteristics between background regions and character components is investigated as a novel approach to cursive script segmentation. First, connected components consisting of more than one character are split into sub-components based on their face-up or face-down background regions. Secondly, the over-segmented sub-components are merged into characters according to the knowledge of character structures and their joining characteristics. The algorithm achieved around 80% correct segmentation on a difficult database of unconstrained handwritten words. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.