Machine reading of handwritten text information in field technician´s maps

In this paper, we describe an approach for automatic reading of text information from field technician´s maps as used in the telecom industry. Given three anchor points as specified by a human operator, the technique isolates the object (cable, or street etc.), identifies all text blocks associated with that object, and converts all information in these text blocks into field data more amenable to future computer manipulation and easy access. The overall algorithm is composed of four main sub-algorithms-contour formation to encompass the object of interest, identification and decomposition of text blocks, identification of individual text blocks by means of HMM based handwriting recognition technique, and finally post-processing of word recognition results by means of field specific knowledge. The success of the algorithm is demonstrated by means of suitable experiments