A new fuzzy normalization algorithm for handwritten Chinese characters recognition

In this paper, a fuzzy normalization method is proposed for normalizing Chinese character images in preprocessing stage of the Chinese character recognition. It is known that the variations of handwritten Chinese characters are great. If we can reduce the variations and preserve the main features of characters in preprocessing the handwritten Chinese characters, the higher recognition rate will be achieved. The new technique of the proposed fuzzy normalization can effectively deal with the irregular length of strokes, especially at the starting or ending stroke of the Chinese characters. By intensive experiments, we compare the new fuzzy normalization method with the general scaling method, and the results show that the proposed method performed well in Chinese character normalization and achieved better recognition rate.