A Review of Sign Language Hand Gesture Recognition Algorithms

Abstract

Research in hand gesture recognition has been going on for several decades due to its many application areas. One of the significant application areas is sign language recognition. Sign language recognition enables to facilitate in bridging the communication barrier that exists between the deaf and hearing people. However, obtaining a robust sign language hand gesture recognition system is still an onerous challenge. Therefore, this paper presents a comparative analysis of the recent algorithms that are applicable to sign language hand gesture recognition with respect to image segmentation and tracking, feature extraction, and gesture classification phases of a sign language hand gesture recognition system. This makes this study unique because many other reviews on hand gesture recognition are not specific to sign language application area. This paper is anticipated to offer important insights to researchers, developers and other interested parties on sign language hand gesture recognition algorithms.