On-Line and Off-Line Handwriting Recognition: A Comprehensive Survey

Handwriting has continued to persist as a means of communication and recording information in day-to-day life even with the introduction of new technologies. Given its ubiquity in human transactions, machine recognition of handwriting has practical significance. as in reading handwritten notes in a PDA. in postal addresses on envelopes, in amounts in bank checks, in handwrilten fields in forms, etc. This ovewiew describes the nature of handwritten language, how it is transduced Into electronic data, and the basic concepts behind written language recognition algorithms. Both the on-line case (which pGrtainS to the availability of trajectory data during writing) and the off-line case (which pertains to scanned images) are considered. Algorithms for preprocessing, character and word recognition, and performance with practical systems are indicated. Other fields of application, like slgnature verification, wrlter authentification, handwriting learning tools are also considered.