ICDAR2017 Competition on Multi-Font and Multi-Size Digitally Represented Arabic Text

This paper describes the organisation and results of the Arabic Recognition Competition: Multi-font Multi-size Digitally Represented Text held in the context of the 14th International Conference on Document Analysis and Recognition (ICDAR'2017), during November 10-15, 2017, Kyoto, Japan. This competition has used the freely available Arabic Printed Text Image (APTI) database. A first and second editions took place respectively in ICDAR'2011 and ICDAR'2013. In this edition, we propose four challenges. Six research groups are participating in the competition with thirteen systems. These systems are compared using the font, font-size, font and font-size, and character and word recognition rates. The systems were tested in a blind manner using the first 5000 images of APTI database set 6. A short description of the participating groups, their systems, the experimental setup, and the observed results are presented.