Text‐Dependent Writer Identification for Arabic Handwriting

Abstract

This paper proposes a system for text‐dependent writer identification based on Arabic handwriting. First, a database of words was assembled and used as a test base. Next, features vectors were extracted from writers′ word images. Prior to the feature extraction process, normalization operations were applied to the word or text line under analysis. In this work, we studied the feature extraction and recognition operations of Arabic text on the identification rate of writers. Because there is no well‐known database containing Arabic handwritten words for researchers to test, we have built a new database of offline Arabic handwriting text to be used by the writer identification research community. The database of Arabic handwritten words collected from 100 writers is intended to provide training and testing sets for Arabic writer identification research. We evaluated the performance of edge‐based directional probability distributions as features, among other characteristics, in Arabic writer identification. Results suggest that longer Arabic words and phrases have higher impact on writer identification.