A chain coding approach for real-time recognition of on-line handwritten characters

A novel chain coding approach is proposed for real-time recognition of isolated on-line handwritten English characters. A new type of generalized chain code (GCC) is proposed for lossless encoding of the variably-spaced handwritten data points produced naturally by an electronic writing tablet due to the fixed sampling rate and the variable writing speed. Distinctive features for each character are then extracted based on the segmented cumulative differential normalized GCC values and structural descriptors. Experiments showed successful real-time recognition of isolated on-line handwritten lowercase English characters on a 486 class PC.