Third International Conference on Emerging Trends in Engineering and Technology

Novel Approach to Segmentation of Handwritten Devnagari Word

Miss Vandana M. Ladwani

Student, Mtech[CSE] G.H.Raisoni College of Engineering Nagpur, India Vandanaladwani@gmail.com

Mrs. Latesh Malik

Assistant Professor, CSE Deptt. G.H.Raisoni College of Engineering Nagpur, India lgmalik@rediffmail.com

Abstract This paper makes an attempt to segment the handwritten Devnagari words. Segmentation of script is essential for handwritten script recognition. Segmentation affects recognition so accurate segmentation is important for implementing OCR. Little work had been reported towards segmentation of handwritten text. Segmentation of handwritten words is a bit complicated as the shape of the handwritten characters is uncertain due to variability in writing styles. The proposed system carries out segmentation in hierarchical order. The system deploys the morphological operations of image processing for segmentation. Neighbourhood tracing algorithm is used for finding the segmented objects in the specific zones that correspond to constituent symbols of the Devnagari script. Segmentation accuracy is found to be 57% for segmentation of top modifiers and 55% for lower modifiers and 52% for characters in core zone. Keywords- Headerline, Top Modifiers, Bottom Modifiers, Fused characters, Erosion, Dilation, contour tracing algorithm

In classical approach the image portion having character like properties are separated. In Recognition based approach system searches for components that match classes in alphabet. In Holistic method an entire component is considered for recognition. The proposed system makes use of Classical approach for segmentation of handwritten Hindi words. Word segmentation is one of the core problems of OCR of handwritten text, which has long been an active area of research. Some important contributions so far in made in this field include of English texts [2],[3],[4],[5],Chinese script[6] and Arabic characters[7]. Statistical information is used in the literature for segmentation of printed Devnagari words. The statistical information is also used for classifying printed conjunct characters into consonants and half consonants. The method of printed Hindi words fail to work on the handwritten words as for the handwritten word the header line which glues all the characters of word is not horizontal as strictly as it is for printed words. Proposed system gives promising results for printed as well as handwritten text. II. CHARACTERISTICS OF DEVNAGARI SCRIPT It is an alphabetic script. This script has twodimensional compositions of symbols. Most of the characters in Devnagari script is formed by curves, holes, and also strokes. Devnagari has 12 vowels and 35 simple consonants. Besides the consonants and the vowels, other constituent symbols in Devnagari are set of vowel modifiers called matra (placed to the left, right, above, or at the bottom of a character or conjunct), pure-consonant (also called half-letters) which when combined with other consonants yield conjuncts. Top modifiers are placed above the shirorekha, which is a horizontal line drawn on the top of the word. The lower modifiers are placed below the character which may or may not touch the characters. More than one lower modifier may also be placed below one character. A character may be in shadow of another character, either due to a lower modifier or due the shapes of two adjacent characters. When they are used to form words, we find that thousands of various combinations ( both simple and complex) are formed.
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I.

INTRODUCTION

In optical character recognition (OCR), a perfect segmentation of characters is required before individual characters are recognized. An OCR has variety of commercial and physical applications. It can be used for automatic reading and processing of the forms, old degraded documents, bank cheques. It can prove as an aid for visually handicapped persons. There are many scripts and languages in India but not much research is done for recognition of handwritten Indian characters. Segmentation is a technique which partitions handwritten Hindi words into individual characters. Since recognition heavily relies on isolated characters, segmentation is a critical step for character recognition because better is the segmentation, lesser is the ambiguity encountered in recognition of candidate characters of word pieces. Casey and Lecolinet[1] describes three strategies for segmentation namely Classical Approach Recognition based segmentation approach Holistic method

978-0-7695-4246-1/10 $26.00 2010 IEEE DOI 10.1109/ICETET.2010.143

A) Vowels

B) Modifier symbols corresponding to vowels (Modifier symbol is attached to consonant to indicate its placing)

bottom. These reservoirs can be utilized for segmentation purpose. The problem with this technique is that sometimes the proper reservoirs may not be obtained as sometimes in a word all its characters do not touch each other which lead to segmentation errors. Shaw, Parui and Shridhar[13]proposed Segmentation based approach to Offline Handwritten Devnagari Word Recognition. The approach is based on novel segmentation .Stroke based features are used as feature vectors. A hidden Markov model is used for recognition at pseudo character level. The word level recognition is done on the basis of a string edit distance.

Figure 2. Image and its individual units

C) Consonants

D) Examples of fused characters

Figure 1. Devnagari character set

Chaudhuri and Pal[14] proposed an OCR System to Read Two Indian Language Scripts: Bangla and Devnagari(Hindi).In their proposed model, for both the scripts same set of algorithm are used for document digitization, skew detection, text line segmentation and zone separation, word and character segmentation, character grouping in to different categories. The feature sets and classification tree as well as knowledge base required, for error correction are different for Devnagari and Bangla.

III.

LITERATURE REVIEW

First research report on handwritten Devnagari characters was published in 1997[10].Few research reports are published recently. Khedkar and Ramanaprasad [11] proposed text - image separation in Devnagari Documents. They proposed a top-down, projection-profile based algorithm to separate text blocks from image blocks in a Devnagari document. The algorithm uses a distinctive feature of Devnagari text, called Shirorekha (Header Line) to analyze the pattern produced by Devnagari text in the horizontal profile. The algorithm uses the features such as regularity in frequency, orientation and spatial cohesion to identify text blocks in a document image containing both text and graphics. Pal and Dutta [12] used the water reservoir technique for segmentation of the unconstrained Bangla text. This technique uses the concept that if water is poured from the top then it will be accumulated in the cavity regions and these reservoirs are called top reservoirs. Similarly bottom reservoirs can also be formed if the water is poured from the

Figure 3. Components of OCR for Bangla and Devnagari

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Bansal and Sinha[15,16] proposed segmentation of touching and fused Devnagari characters for printed text .The technique proposed by them uses two pass algorithm for the segmentation and decomposition of Devnagari composite characters/symbols into their constituent symbols. The proposed algorithm extensively uses structural properties of the script. In the first pass, words are segmented into easily separable characters/composite characters. Statistical information about the height and width of each separated box is used to hypothesize whether a character box is composite. In the second pass, the hypothesized composite characters are further segmented. A recognition rate of 85 percent has been achieved for the segmentation of conjuncts. But this technique fails for the handwritten document.

A. Determining Location of Text Line i) For each scan line the proposed system will check all the pixels on that scan line ii) If for particular pixel intensity value is 1,the system will store that scan line number. iii) For the stored scan line position the system will check subsequent scan lines iv) Till a scan line containing no black pixels is obtained. v) Then the dimension of the text line will be found from stored scan line positions B. Determining Location of Word in Text Line i) For each vertical scan line all horizontal pixels will be examined if any pixel having intensity value 1 is found its position will be noted. ii) Subsequent scan lines are checked till we get a scan line with all pixels having intensity value 0.Position of that scan line will be noted. iii) Position 1 and 2 noted in above two steps determine the location and boundary of the word to be segmented. C. Determining Location of header line Header line is the most prominent part of the word image that glues all the characters in the image. Once the header line is separated, the word image gets divided into two parts. One comprising of the top strip and the other comprising of middle and the core strip. The top strip contains top modifiers, middle stream contains the characters some of which may be fused and the bottom strip contains the lower modifiers. For header line segmentation the proposed system deploys the morphological operations of image processing. For segmenting the header line the proposed system carries out the following steps 1. Erosion 2. Dilation 3. Cropping 4. Object recognition 5. Header line detection 1) Erosion: The input word image is eroded with the following structuring element to obtain the processed image. The processed image obtained is more sharp as the process of erosion makes the image more fine. The structuring element used to carry out the erosion is of dimension 2X4. 2) Dilation: The structuring element used to carry out the dilation is chosen in such a way that it is sensitive to the shape of header line in the word image. The processed image obtained as a result of the dilation is the image containing the components whose shape is same as that of the structuring element. The structuring element chosen is sensitive to the headerline of the word image. The structuring element designed to carry out the dilation is of dimension 1X4.

Figure 4. Word Image ,its projection and extracted units

IV.

PROPOSED APPROACH

The proposed system deals with segmentation of modifiers in upper zone called top modifiers, segmentation of modifiers in lower zone called lower modifiers and fused characters. The system executes the following steps on scanned text. A) Determining location of text line B) Determining location of word on text line C) Determining location of header line D) Separating the zone above headerline E) Segmenting the top modifiers F) Extracting the zone below headerline G) Separating the characters below headerline . H) Segmenting lower modifiers from the characters. I) Identifying Fused characters J) Segmentation of fused characters

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3) Cropping: As a result of dilation two extra bands are created at the left most and right most boundary of the word image, In this step these extra bands are removed . 4) Object Recognition: In this step the proposed system uses contour tracing algorithm which takes a point on the contour of an object and returns all the pixels in its neighborhood of that pixel which comprise the object. 5) Header line detection: From the set of objects which are obtained as a result of step 4, the object having max size is detected, that object corresponds to the header line. D. Separating the zone above headerline For segmenting the top modifiers first the zone containing the top modifiers is separated from the word image. Since the header line is not completely straight, finding the zone corresponding to the top modifiers is not trivial. So for this the proposed system saves the position of all the pixels that belong to the header line. Taking each pixel of the header line all the pixels having the y coordinate greater than or equal to y coordinate of the pixel under consideration are set to intensity similar to that of foreground pixels. As a result the pixels left in the image correspond to the top modifiers. E. Segmenting the Top Modifiers For segmentation of Top Modifiers the proposed system makes use of the following algorithm. Input : Object T, containing a connected component P of black cells. Output : A sequence B (b1, b2 , bk) of boundary pixels. N(a) be the neighborhood of pixel a. p denote the current boundary pixel. c denote the current pixel under consideration. Begin Set B to be empty. From bottom to top and left to right scan the cells of T until a black pixel, s, of P is found. Insert s in B. Set the current boundary point p to s . move back to the pixel from which s was entered. Set c to be the next clockwise pixel in N(p). While c not equal to s do If c is black insert c in B set p=c backtrack (move the current pixel c to the pixel from which p was entered) else advance the current pixel c to the next clockwise pixel in N(p) End While End

P1 P2 P3 P8 P P4 P7 P6 P5
Figure 5. Path traced around the current boundary pixel

F. Extracting the zone below headerline All the pixels having the x coordinate same as the any pixel of header line but y coordinate less than or equal to the pixel under consideration are set to intensity same as the background pixels. The image portion so obtained is the part below the headerline which is further to be segmented. Separating the characters below headerline The characters present in the word image obtained after removing headerline can be separated by finding the consecutive scan lines with all pixels having intensity value 0. H. Segmenting lower modifiers from the characters For finding the segmentation point the proposed system performs Highlighted Point Detection, Vertical Line Detection algorithms and bottom modifier identifier algorithms. Once the segmentation point is determined the character image is trimmed below segmentation point to separate lower modifier. G.

Figure 6. Flowchart for highlighted point detection

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65% of the average width the process is repeated till next three pixel thick column is found. 2) Extraction of right consonant: From the end column determined in the previous step to the end of the character image, entire part is enclosed in a rectangular box. The width rectangular box is checked. If it is greater than 85% of the average width character enclosed in the rectangular box is categorized as the right consonant. V. RESULTS The results obtained with the proposed technique are as follows

Figure 7. Flowchart for vertical line detection algorithm

Figure 9. Original image to be segmented

Figure 8. Flowchart for bottom modifier identifier

I.

Identifying Fused Characters To determine for fused characters that need further segmentation system determines width of all the characters obtained in the step 3.7 and calculates the average width, all the characters having the width greater than the average width are categorized as fused characters. J. Segmentation of Fused Characters Figure10. Segmented headerline 1) Extraction of left consonant : Proposed system carries out segmentation of fused character in to left and right consonant .Left consonant is the half consonant and right consonant is the full consonant .The proposed system scans the character image vertically till a column with one pixel thick intensity is found. Keeping y constant the proposed system checks the consecutive columns till column with more than 3 pixels is found. System stores the start column and end column position. If the column width calculated as width between start and end column is more than 65% of the average width, the portion between the two columns is considered as the left consonant of the composite character. If the width between start and the end column is less than
Figure 11. Segmented top modifier

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REFERENCES
[1] Richard G. Casey and Eric Lecolinet, A Survey of Methods and Strategies in Character Segmentation, IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, Vol. 18 No. 7, July 1996.J. Clerk Maxwell, A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism, 3rd ed., vol. 2. Oxford: Clarendon, 1892, pp.6873. R.G. Casey et.al. A Survey of Methods and Strategies in Character Segmentation, IEEE Trans. Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, vol. 18,pp 690-706, 1996. R.M. Bozinovic et.al. Off-line Cursive Script Word Recognition, IEEE Trans. Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, vol. 11,pp 68-83, 1989. J.T. Faveta, Offline General Handwritten Word Recognition Using an Approximate BEAM Matching Algorithm, IEEE Trans. Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, vol. 23,pp 1069-1021, 2001. A.W. Senior et.al. An Off-line Cursive Handwriting Recognition System, IEEE Trans. Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, vol. 20,pp 309-321, 1998. [6] P.K. Wong and et.al. Off-line Handwritten Chinese Character Recognition as a Compound Bays Decision Problem, IEEE Trans. Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, vol. 20,pp 1016-1023, 1998. A. Amin Off-Line Arabic Character Recognition: The State of the Art, Pattern Recognition, vol. 31, No. 5. pp. 517-530, 1998. Veena Bansal and R. M. K. Sinha (2001), A complete OCR for printed Hindi text in Devnagari script, Document Analysis and Recognition, 2001. Proceeding. IEEE Sixth international conference, pp. 800-804 Bansal V, Sinha R. M. K., Integrating Knowledge Resources in Devnagri. Text recognition system, IEEE Transaction on System, Man & Cybernatics Part A:Systems & Humans. V30 n 4 july 2000.p 500-505. I.K. Sethi and B. Chatterjee, Machine Recognition of constrained Hand printed Devnagari, Pattern Recognition, Vol. 9, pp. 69-75, 1977. Swapnil Khedekar, Vemulapati Ramanaprasad ,Srirangaraj Setlur, Text Image Separation in Devnagari Documents, Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference on Document Analysis and Recognition (ICDAR 2003). U. Pal and Sagarika Datta, Segmentation of Bangla unconstrained handwritten text, Computer vision and pattern recognition unit. [13]Bikash Shaw, Swapan Kr. Parui, Malayappan Shridhar, Offline Handwritten Devnagari Word Recognition: A Segmentation Based Approach, IEEE Transactions B. B. Chaudhuri and U. Pal,An OCR System to Read Two Indian Language Scripts: Bangla and Devnagari (Hindi),Document Analysis and Recognition. Bansal V, Sinha R. M. K., Integrating Knowledge Resources in Devnagri. Text recognition system, IEEE Transaction on System, Man & Cybernatics Part A:Systems & Humans. V30 n 4 july 2000.p 500-505. Veena Bansal and R.M.K. Sinha. Segmentation of touching and Fused Devnagari characters, ". Pattern recognition, vol. 35: 875-893, 2002 S. Arora, D. Bhattacharjee, M. Nasipuri, L. Malik, A Novel Approach for Handwritten Devnagari Character Recognition, International Conference on Signal and Image Processing (ICSIP), Hubli, Karnataka, India, 2006 DeshpandeP.S., Malik Latesh, Arora Sandhya, Fine Classification & Recognition of Hand Written Devnagari Characters with Regular Expressions & Minimum Edit Distance Method JOURNAL OF COMPUTERS, VOL. 3, NO. 5, MAY 2008

[2]

[3]

[4]
Figure 12. Segmented bottom modifier

[5]

[6]

[7] [8]

[9]

Figure 13. Segmented fused character

[10]

TABLE I.

SEGMENTATION RESULTS

[11]

Total number of samples 100

Accuracy for segmentation of top modifiers 57%

Accuracy for segmentation of lower modifiers 55%

Accuracy for segmentation of characters in core zone 52%

[12] [13]

[14]

VI.

CONCLUSION

The proposed technique was tested on the data set of 100 handwritten Devnagari (Hindi) Words. An accuracy of 57% for segmentation of top modifiers, 55% for segmentation of lower modifiers and 52% for segmentation of characters in the core zone has been achieved. The novelty of the proposed technique resides in the fact that it makes use of morphological operations of image processing. The technique is suitable for both handwritten and well as printed Devnagari words. This work is one of its own kind and will be useful to the researchers for the work towards other Indian script characters.

[15]

[16]

[17]

[18]

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