Method to extract and recognize topographic symbols from contour maps

To extract and recognize topographic symbols from topographic contour maps is a practical problem in the field of pattern recognition. In this paper, we try to put forward an effective method to solve this problem. By using this method, the symbols are first entracted from the topographic contour maps by eliminating the background of the symbols, and then they are recognized by a neural net, the Hamming net. Experimental results show the effectiveness of this method.