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Arabic Word Recognition by Classifiers and Context

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Abstract

Given the number and variety of methods used for handwriting recognition, it has been shown that there is no single method that can be called the “best”. In recent years, the combination of different classifiers and the use of contextual information have become major areas of interest in improving recognition results. This paper addresses a case study on the combination of multiple classifiers and the integration of syntactic level information for the recognition of handwritten Arabic literal amounts. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time either of these methods has been applied to Arabic word recognition. Using three individual classifiers with high level global features, we performed word recognition experiments. A parallel combination method was tested for all possible configuration cases of the three chosen classifiers. A syntactic analyzer makes a final decision on the candidate words generated by the best configuration scheme. The effectiveness of contextual knowledge integration in our application is confirmed by the obtained results.

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Correspondence to Nadir Farah.

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Nadir Farah received his B. Eng. and M.Sc. degrees in computer science from Annaba University, Algeria in 1989 and 1994 respectively. Since 1994, he has been a teacher and a researcher in Laboratory of Informatics at Annaba University. Currently, he is a Ph.D. candidate in computer science at the same university. His research interests are pattern recognition, character/word recognition, signal processing and bioinformatics.

Labiba Souici received her B. Eng. and M.Sc. degrees in computer science from Badji Mokhtar University, Annaba, Algeria, in 1992 and 1996 respectively. Since 1996 she has been an assistant professor at the Computer Science Department of the same university. Currently, she is a Ph.D. candidate and a researcher at the LRI Laboratory of Badji Mokhtar University. Her research interests include pattern recognition, Arabic handwritten word recognition, artificial intelligence, hybrid neural systems and perception-oriented systems.

Mokhtar Sellami received his Ph.D. degree in computer sciences from the University of Grenoble (France), in the topics of expert systems and logic programming in 1989. He participates in many international research projects in ESPRIT programme (European Scientific Project Research in Information and Technology) and Algeria . He is currently director of Computer Research Laboratory at Annaba University and a senior lecturer in artificial intelligence and expert systems. His professional interests include pattern recognition applied to Arabic image processing, information technology and knowledge engineering.

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Farah, N., Souici, L. & Sellami, M. Arabic Word Recognition by Classifiers and Context. J Comput Sci Technol 20, 402–410 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11390-005-0402-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11390-005-0402-9

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