An overview of character recognition focused on off-line handwriting

Character recognition (CR) has been extensively studied in the last half century and has progressed to a level that is sufficient to produce technology-driven applications. Now, rapidly growing computational power is enabling the implementation of the present CR methodologies and is creating an increasing demand in many emerging application domains which require more advanced methodologies. This paper serves as a guide and update for readers working in the CR area. First, the historical evolution of CR systems is presented. Then, the available CR techniques, with their superiorities and weaknesses, are reviewed. Finally, the current status of CR is discussed and directions for future research are suggested. Special attention is given to off-line handwriting recognition, since this area requires more research in order to reach the ultimate goal of machine simulation of human reading.