Slant correction of handwritten word using two-dimensional warping

Slant correction of characters is necessary in the segmentation of a handwritten word into component characters. Conventional slant correction techniques estimate the average slant angle of component characters and correct only uniform slant resulting residual error for each character. In this paper, a slant correction technique which can well correct nonuniform slant is proposed. In the present technique, the slant correction problem is formulated as a non-linear mapping problem of slanted strokes onto vertical straight lines. Then a dynamic programming-based two-dimentional warping algorithm is applied to optimize the mapping. The effectiveness of the present technique was shown by experiments.