Chaincode Contour Processing for Handwritten Word Recognition

Abstract—Contour representations of binary images of handwritten words afford considerable reduction in storage requirements while providing lossless representation. On the other hand, the one-dimensional nature of contours presents interesting challenges for processing images for handwritten word recognition. Our experiments indicate that significant gains are to be realized in both speed and recognition accuracy by using a contour representation in handwriting applications. Index Terms—Image processing, chain code, handwriting recognition, preprocessing, segmentation, feature extraction. æ