ICDAR2015 competition on Multi-script Writer Identification and Gender Classification using ‘QUWI’ Database

This competition targets writer identification and gender classification from offline handwritten documents using the QUWI database. The most interesting aspect of the competition is the use of a dataset with writing samples of the same individual in Arabic as well as English. The competition not only allows an objective comparison of different systems but also permits to investigate the performance of traditional script-dependent systems in a multi-script experimental setup. This paper describes the competition details including the competition tasks, the database employed, the methods used by the participating systems, evaluation and ranking criteria and the overall rankings of the participants. The competition received a total of 13 submissions from 8 different institutions. Writer identification tasks received 5 while the gender classification tasks received 8 submissions.