Handwritten text recognition through writer adaptation

Abstract

Handwritten text recognition is a problem rarely studied out of specific applications for which lexical knowledge can constrain the vocabulary to a limited one. In the case of handwritten text recognition, additional information can be exploited to characterize the specificity of the writing. This knowledge can help the recognition system to find coherent solutions from both the lexical and the morphological points of view. We present the principles of a handwritten text recognition system based on the online learning of the writer shapes. The proposed scheme is shown to improve the recognition rates on a sample of fifteen writings, unknown to the system.