Handwriting recognition for a postal check reading system

This paper discusses several aspects of automatic handwriting recognition designed for a postal check reading system. We first present the general methodology, including a new approach called perturbation method. Then we explain how the general methodology is applied to three subproblems in handwriting recognition, namely, the recognition of isolated numerals: that of numeral strings, and the recognition of cursively handwritten words drawn from a small lexicon. Experimental results performed on worldwide standard databases show that our systems are either equivalent to or better than state-of-the-art systems. A preliminary experiment of reading real Swiss checks shows that the system rejects about 50% and correctly recognises the remaining checks.