Recovering dynamic information from static handwriting

It is generally agreed that the advantage of on-line character recognition methods with respect to off-line ones mostly relies on the availability of dynamic information. This mainly concerns the order in which the strokes forming characters have been drawn. In this paper we present and discuss a method which attempts, in the off-line case, to recover part of the lost script dynamics. The method makes it possible to reconstruct one of the most likely trajectories followed by the writer while drawing characters. It is based on a suitable implementation of good continuity criteria which take into account direction, length and width of the strokes making up characters. The algorithm either subdivides or unfolds the digital ribbon forming isolated characters as well as groups of connected characters, by solving the ambiguities which arise at every joint. Experimental results are reported and discussed