Top Down Analysis of Line Structure in Handwritten Documents

One of the most challenging tasks in analyzing handwritten documents is to tackle the inherent skew that is introduced due to writer´s handwriting, segment the handwritten lines and estimate the skew angle and its direction. Complexities such as variable spacing between words and lines, variable line skew, variable line width and height, overlapping words and lines etc. arises in handwritten documents unlike printed documents. This paper explores the application of Radon transform to process handwritten documents and compares its performance with Hough transform while segmenting lines and detecting skew. The computational advantage of Radon transform over Hough transform with equally good results makes it an ideal choice to process handwritten documents.