On-line cursive Kanji character recognition as stroke correspondence problem

This paper describes a stroke-number and stroke-order free on-line Kanji character recognition method by a joint use of two complementary algorithms of optimal stroke correspondence determination: one dissolves excessive mapping and the other dissolves deficient mapping. Also, three kinds of inter-stroke distances are devised to deal with stroke concatenation or splitting and heavy shape distortion. Only a single reference pattern for each of 2,980 Kanji character categories is generated by using training data composed of 120 patterns written with the correct stroke-number and stroke-order. Recognition tests are made using the training data and two kinds of resting data in the square style and in the cursive style written by 36 different people; recognition rates of 99.5%, 97.6%, and 94.1% are obtained