Multistage Convolutional Neural Network With Deformable Attention for Word-Level Offline Text-Independent Writer Identification

Offline writer identification is an essential component of biometric and forensic security fields, focusing on identifying the authors of handwritten documents in physical form. Historically, this approach has focused on text-dependent identification using page-level document images containing multiple paragraphs and sentences. However, text-independent identification using a limited number of word-level text images still faces performance challenges in real-world scenarios, especially when relying on traditional handcrafted features. To address these issues, this study improves the generalization and interpretative capabilities in word-level offline text-independent writer identification by introducing a novel multistage convolutional neural network designed as an end-to-end model. We then improve the model’s ability to interpret and classify handwriting effectively by incorporating the insights of forensic document examiners through the use of a deformable attention module. The experimental validation on four public datasets, namely, IAM, CVL, Firemaker, and CERUG-EN, confirmed the effectiveness of the proposed method.