Character Segmentation of Sindhi, an Arabic Style Scripting Language, using Height Profile Vector

In this paper, a problem of sub-word segmentation of printed Sindhi, an Arabic style scripting language, into characters is addressed. Printed or handwritten Sindhi text is cursive in nature. In the cursive writing, mostly the subsequent characters in a word are joined with each other. In the proposed segmentation algorithm, first of all, Height Profile Vector (HPV) of thinned primary stroke of a sub-word is calculated and analyzed for the segmentation into its constituent characters. The number and locations of possible segmentation points (PSP) are determined. The number of PSPs gives a rough estimation of the number of characters in the sub-word. The data around the last PSP is further analyzed to determine the exact number of characters in the sub-word. As the characters’ set of Sindhi is the superset set of Arabic characters’ set hence the proposed segmentation algorithm may be used for the segmentation of text written in other Arabic scripting languages.