Improved Deep Convolutional Neural Network For Online Handwritten Chinese Character Recognition using Domain-Specific Knowledge

Weixin Yang, Lianwen Jin, Zecheng Xie, Ziyong Feng

Published 2015-05-28Version 1

Deep convolutional neural networks (DCNNs) have achieved great success in various computer vision and pattern recognition applications, including those for handwritten Chinese character recognition (HCCR). However, most current DCNN-based HCCR approaches treat the handwritten sample simply as an image bitmap, ignoring some vital domain-specific information that may be useful but that cannot be learnt by traditional networks. In this paper, we propose an enhancement of the DCNN approach to online HCCR by incorporating a variety of domain-specific knowledge, including deformation, non-linear normalization, imaginary strokes, path signature, and 8-directional features. Our contribution is twofold. First, these domain-specific technologies are investigated and integrated with a DCNN to form a composite network to achieve improved performance. Second, the resulting DCNNs with diversity in their domain knowledge are combined using a hybrid serial-parallel (HSP) strategy. Consequently, we achieve a promising accuracy of 97.20% and 96.87% on CASIA-OLHWDB1.0 and CASIA-OLHWDB1.1, respectively, outperforming the best results previously reported in the literature.