Off-line handwritten Arabic character segmentation algorithm: ACSA

Character segmentation is a necessary preprocessing step for character recognition in many OCR systems. It is an important step because incorrectly segmented characters are unlikely to be recognized correctly. The most difficult case in character segmentation is the cursive script. The scripted nature of Arabic written language poses some high challenges for automatic character segmentation and recognition. In this paper, a new character segmentation algorithm (ACSA) of Arabic scripts is presented. The developed segmentation algorithm yields on the segmentation of isolated handwritten words in perfectly separated characters. It is based on morphological rules, which are constructed at the feature extraction phase. Finally, ACSA is combined with an existing handwritten Arabic character recognition system (RECAM).