Fuzzy Segmentation and Graphemes Modeling for Online Arabic Handwriting Recognition

In this paper we present a new modeling approach for online Arabic handwriting which is based on fuzzy graphemes segmentation. In the literature, the result of the graphemes segmentation of a cursive writing not often reaches its optimum. This fact is due to the crisp aspect of the segmentation decision. In order to overcome this problem, we propose to introduce a fuzzy effect in this segmentation decision by overlapping the segmented graphemes in proportion to the confidence degrees associated with the detection of the particular points that separate them. The fuzzified boundary shapes of the extracted fuzzy graphemes are then modeled taking into account the coefficient of fuzzy membership of their points. The obtained results by using the ADAB database show an improvement of the recognition rate given by the fuzzy segmentation approach compared to the crisp one.