Morphological cursive word segmentation

The work describes a new algorithm for segmentation of handwritten cursive words, based on the following two hypotheses: 1) natural segmentation points (SPs) exist corresponding to disconnected characters; and 2) the physical SPs between connected characters are located in ligatures. The morphological operations of opening and closing are utilized in the determination of word ligatures. A genetic algorithm was employed in the search for the optimum structuring element to determine ligatures.