Fusion of segmentation strategies for off-line cursive handwriting recognition

Cursive handwriting recognition is a challenging task for many real world applications such as document authentication, form processing, postal address recognition, reading machines for the blind, bank cheque recognition and interpretation of historical documents. Therefore, in last few decades the researchers have put enormous effort to develop various techniques for handwriting recognition. This chapter reviews existing handwriting recognition techniques and presents the current state of the art in cursive handwriting recognition. The chapter also presents segmentation strategies and a segmentation-based approach for automated recognition of unconstrained cursive handwriting. The chapter provides a comprehensive literature with basic and advanced techniques and research results in handwriting recognition for graduate students and also for advanced researchers.