Segmentation of Bangla unconstrained handwritten text

TLDR

Bangla handwritten character segmentation is challenging because characters are rarely vertically separable. The study proposes a robust scheme to segment unconstrained Bangla handwritten text into lines, words, and characters, addressing writer variability. The method segments lines by dividing the text into vertical stripes, computing stripe widths from text‑height statistics, and using horizontal histograms to locate line minima; words are extracted via vertical projection profiles, and characters are separated with a water‑reservoir approach that identifies isolated and touching components and segments them based on reservoir base area points and structural features.

Abstract

To take care of variability involved in the writing style ofdifferent individuals in this paper we propose a robustscheme to segment unconstrained handwritten Banglatexts into lines, words and characters. For linesegmentation, at first, we divide the text into verticalstripes. Stripe width of a document is computed bystatistical analysis of the text height in the document.Next we determine horizontal histogram of these stripesand the relationship of the minimal values of thehistograms is used to segment text lines. Based onvertical projection profile lines are segmented intowords. Segmentation of characters from handwrittenword is very tricky as the characters are seldomvertically separable. We use a concept based on waterreservoir principle for the purpose. Here we, at first,identify isolated and connected (touching) characters ina word. Next touching characters of the word aresegmented based on the reservoir base area points andstructural feature of the component.