Signature identification via local association of features

Establishing the identify of a signature by automatic search through a database of signatures is of interest in several areas. This paper describes a system for this purpose. The proposed identification system uses a set of geometric and topologic features to characterize each signature. By considering the spatial distribution of these features, the system maps each signature into two strings of finite symbols. A local associative indexing scheme is then used on these strings to organize the collection of signatures of known identity. When presented with a signature of unknown identity, the system uses the same indexing scheme to retrieve a candidate set of signatures. A verification process is then carried out to find the best match from the candidate set. The performance of the proposed system has been tested with a moderate database. The results obtained indicate that the proposed system is able to identify signatures with great accuracy even when a part of a signature is missing.