A Real-time DSP-Based Optical Character Recognition System for Isolated Arabic characters using the TI TMS320C6416T

Optical Character Recognition (OCR) is an area of research that has attracted the interest of researchers for the past forty years. Although the subject has been the center topic for many researchers for years, it remains one of the most challenging and exciting areas in pattern recognition. Since Arabic is one of the most widely used languages in the world, the demand for a robust OCR for this language could be commercially valuable. There are varieties of software based solutions available for Arabic OCR. However, there is little work done in the area of hardware implementation of Arabic OCR where speed is a factor. In this research, a robust DSP-based OCR is designed for recognition of Arabic characters. Since the scope of this research is focused on hardware implementation, the system is designed for recognition of isolated Arabic characters. An efficient recognition algorithm based on feature extraction and using a Fuzzy ART Neural Network as well as the hardware implementation is also proposed in this research. A recognition rate of 95% is reported.