ICFHR 2010 - Arabic Handwriting Recognition Competition

This paper describes the Arabic handwriting recognition competition held at International Conference on Frontiers in Handwriting Recognition (ICFHR 2010) in Kolkata, India. This fourth competition (the first was at ICDAR 2005 in Seoul, South Korea, the second at ICDAR 2007 in Curitiba, Brazil and the third at ICDAR 2009 in Barcelona, Spain) again used the IfN/ENIT-database with Arabic handwritten Tunisian town names. Today, more than 100 research groups from universities, research centers, and industry are working with this database worldwide. This year, 4 groups with 6 systems participated at the competition. The systems were tested on known data and on two data sets which were unknown to the participants. The systems were compared based on the most important characteristic: the recognition rate. Additionally, the relative speed of the different systems was compared. A short description of the participating groups, their systems, and the results achieved are finally presented.