Efficient word segmentation driven by unconstrained handwritten phrase recognition

An efficient system which finds the best match between an input image and a lexicon is presented. To capture writing style of spacing between words and characters prime stroke analysis based on statistical methods is introduced. A method for estimating bound on number of characters without actual recognition is also presented. For system efficiency, before actual recognition, classified groups of word segments and eligible subset of lexicons are generated as hypotheses. The hypotheses are verified and ordered by a lexicon driven word recognizor. We have tested our approach in the street name recognition/interpretation for US mail stream. Experimental results and encouraging.