Combining HMM classifiers in a handwritten text recognition system

A study of several methods for combining information from two classifiers in a system for the recognition of handwritten text is presented. The system uses two hidden Markov models (HMMs) per character to model columns and rows of pixels in the character image. We show that the best method of combining the results from the vertical and horizontal classifiers is simply to multiply the probabilities produced by the two methods. This approach outperforms more complicated classifier combination strategies such as the behaviour-knowledge space (BKS) method