Character Segmentation using Side Profile Pattern
Min-Chul Jung · Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems · 2004
In this paper, a new character segmentation algorithm of machine printed character recognition is proposed. The new approach of the proposed character segmentation algorithm overcomes the weak points of both feature-based approaches and recognition-based approaches in character segmentation. This paper defines side profiles of touching characters. The character segmentation algorithm gives a candidate single character in touching characters by side profiles, without any help of character recognizer. It segments touching characters and decides the candidate single character by side profiles. This paper also defines cutting cost, which makes the proposed character segmentation find an optimal segmenting path. The performance of the proposed character segmentation algorithm in this paper has been obtained using a real envelope reader system, which can recognize addresses in U.S. mail pieces and sort the mail pieces. 3359 mail pieces were tested. The improvement was from by the proposed character segmentation.