Improving classification using a Confidence Matrix based on weak classifiers applied to OCR

This paper proposes a new feature representation method based on the construction of a Confidence Matrix (CM). This representation consists of posterior probability values provided by several weak classifiers, each one trained and used in different sets of features from the original sample. The CM allows the final classifier to abstract itself from discovering underlying groups of features. In this work the CM is applied to isolated character image recognition, for which several set of features can be extracted from each sample. Experimentation has shown that the use of the CM permits a significant improvement in accuracy in most cases, while the others remain the same. The results were obtained after experimenting with four well-known corpora, using evolved meta-classifiers with the k-Nearest Neighbor rule as weak classifier and by applying statistical significance tests.