Analysis of stroke structures of handwritten Chinese characters

Most handwritten Chinese character recognition systems suffer from the variations in geometrical features for different writing styles. The stroke structures of different styles have proved to be more consistent than geometrical features. In an on-line recognition system, the stroke structure can be obtained according to the sequences of writing via a pen-based input device such as a tablet. But in an off-line recognition system, the input characters are scanned optically and saved as raster images, so the stroke structure information is not available. In this paper, we propose a method to extract strokes from an off-line handwritten Chinese character. We have developed four new techniques: 1) a new thinning algorithm based on Euclidean distance transformation and gradient oriented tracing, 2) a new line approximation method based on curvature segmentation, 3) artifact removal strategies based on geometrical analysis, and 4) stroke segmentation rules based on splitting, merging and directional analysis. Using these techniques, we can extract and trace the strokes in an off-line handwritten Chinese character accurately and efficiently. © 1999 IEEE.