This book provides an algorithmic perspective on the recent development of Chinese handwriting recognition. Two technically sound strategies, the segmentation-free and integrated segmentation-recognition strategy, are investigated and algorithms that have worked well in practice are primarily focused on. Baseline systems are initially presented for these strategies and are subsequently expanded on and incrementally improved. The sophisticated algorithms covered include: 1) string sample expansion algorithms which synthesize string samples from isolated characters or distort realistic string samples; 2) enhanced feature representation algorithms, e.g. enhanced four-plane features and Delta features; 3) novel learning algorithms, such as Perceptron learning with dynamic margin, MPE training and distributed training; and lastly 4) ensemble algorithms, that is, combining the two strategies using both parallel structure and serial structure. All the while, the book moves from basic to advanced algorithms, helping readers quickly embark on the study of Chinese handwriting recognition.

Autorentext
Dr. Tonghua Su has been working in the character recognition field over 10 years. The research group with which Dr. Su has been working released the HIT-MW database, which is now used at over 60 universities/institutes. They are the first group to systematically study the recognition problem of Chinese handwriting and developed the HMM-based recognizer and the PL-MQDF classifier for Chinese handwritten character recognition.

Zusammenfassung
Designing machines that can read handwriting like human beings has been an ambitious goal for more than half a century, driving talented researchers to explore diverse approaches. Obstacles have often been encountered that at first appeared insurmountable but were indeed overcome before long. Yet some open issues remain to be solved. As an indispensable branch, Chinese handwriting recognition has been termed as one of the most difficult Pattern Recognition tasks. Chinese handwriting recognition poses its own unique challenges, such as huge variations in strokes, diversity of writing styles, and a large set of confusable categories. With ever-increasing training data, researchers have pursued elaborate algorithms to discern characters from different categories and compensate for the sample variations within the same category. As a result, Chinese handwriting recognition has evolved substantially and amazing achievements can be seen. This book introduces integral algorithms used in Chinese handwriting recognition and the applications of Chinese handwriting recogniers. The first part of the book covers both widespread canonical algorithms to a reliable recognizer and newly developed scalable methods in Chinese handwriting recognition. The recognition of Chinese handwritten text is presented systematically, including instructive guidelines for collecting samples, novel recognition paradigms, distributed discriminative learning of appearance models and distributed estimation of contextual models for large categories, in addition to celebrated methods, e.g. Gradient features, MQDF and HMMs. In the second part of this book, endeavors are made to create a friendlier human-machine interface through application of Chinese handwriting recognition. Four scenarios are exemplified: grid-assisted input, shortest moving input, handwritten micro-blog, and instant handwriting messenger. All the while, the book moves from basic to more complex approaches, also providing a list forfurther reading with literature comments.

Inhalt
Introduction.- HIT-MW Database.- Integrated Segmentation-Recognition Strategy.- Segmentation-free Strategy: Basic Algorithms.- Segmentation-free Strategy: Advanced Algorithms