An Improved Handwritten Tamil Character Recognition System using Octal Graph

Problem Statement: Handwriting recognition has attracted voluminous research in recent times. The segmentation and recognition of the characters from handwritten scripts incorporates considerable overhead. Almost all the existing handwritten character recognition techniques use neural network approach, which requires lot of preprocessing and hence accomplishing these problems using neural network is a tedious task. Approach: In this study we propose a novel solution for performing character recognition in Tamil, the official language of the south Indian province of Tamil Nadu. Pursued by the preprocessing techniques, Segmentation, Normalization and Feature Extraction the approach utilizes octal graph conversion for recognizing off-line handwritten Tamil characters which improves the slant correction. The graph tries to represent the basic form of a letter independent of the style of writing. Using the weights of the graphs and by the appropriate feature matching with the predefined characters, the written characters are recognized. Results: The performance evaluation of off line handwritten Tamil character using octal graph conversion and the metrics based on ranks of the letters proves good Recognition Efficiency Conclusion: We show that, in practise, the proposed approach produces near optimal results besides outperforming the other methodologies in existence. Results indicate that the approach can be used for character recognition in other Indic scripts as well.