Generalised projections: a tool for cursive handwriting normalisation

The paper addresses the problem of removing unwanted variations in cursive handwriting by estimating and compensating reference lines and slant angle. To this purpose, the paper introduces the mathematical framework of generalized projections (GP), an extension of the well known projection profiles (PP). This framework proved to be quite effective and robust in the estimation of those parameters. The particular application of GP to skew angle estimation, slant estimation and reference lines detection is then described. Experimental results are finally presented and discussed.