Discriminative HMM training with GA for handwritten word recognition

This paper presents a recognition system for isolated handwritten Bangla words, with a fixed lexicon, using a left-right Hidden Markov Model (HMM). A stochastic search method, namely, Genetic Algorithm (GA) is used to train the HMM. A new shape based direction encoding features has been developed and introduced in our recognition system. Both non-discriminative and discriminative training procedures have been applied iteratively to optimize the parameters of HMM.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2008
• Where: ICPR
• Authors: Tapan Kumar Bhowmik, Swapan K. Parui, Utpal Roy
• Keywords: Computer Vision, ICPR 2008, Isolated Handwritten Bangla, Left-right Hidden Markov, Stochastic Search Method