A combination of statistical and syntactical pattern recognition applied to classification of unconstrained handwritten numerals

摘要

This paper describes a combination of statistical and syntactical pattern recognition methods. The hierarchically structured recognition system consists of a conventional statistical classifier, a structural classifier analysing the topological composition of the patterns, a stage reducing the number of hypotheses made by the first two stages, and a mixed stage based on a search for maximum similarity between syntactically generated prototypes and patterns. The stages work on different principles to avoid mistakes made in one stage by the others. This concept is applied to the recognition of numerals written without constraints. If no samples are rejected a recognition rate of 99.5% is obtained.