Description of signature images and its application to their classification

A method for signature description based on the human way of recognizing objects is introduced. Like humans, this method first recognizes objects globally and then recognizes finer details. The description is hierarchical: the signature is at the top level, and each lower level gives more details about the higher one. Features are extracted in a relative way (e.g. the length is measured by its ratio to the width) to make the method insensitive to the natural variations that occur in genuine signatures, and are mapped into a conceptual description. This conceptual description is then used to classify the signature images.<>