Robust line segmentation for handwritten documents

Line segmentation is the first and the most critical pre-processing step for a document recognition/analysis task. Complex handwritten documents with lines running into each other impose a great challenge for the line segmentation problem due to the absence of online stroke information. This paper describes a method to disentangle lines running into each other, by splitting and associating the correct character strokes to the appropriate lines. The proposed method can be used along with the existing algorithm1 that identifies such overlapping lines in documents. A stroke tracing method is used to intelligently segment the overlapping components. The method uses slope and curvature information of the stroke to disambiguate the course of the stroke at cross points. Once the overlapping components are segmented into strokes, a statistical method is used to associate the strokes with appropriate lines.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2008
• Where: DRR
• Authors: Kamal Kuzhinjedathu, Harish Srinivasan, Sargur N. Srihari
• Keywords: Appropriate Lines, Document Analysis, DRR 2008, Line Segmentation, Stroke Tracing Method