Bangla/English script identification based on analysis of connected component profiles

Abstract

Script identification is required for a multilingual OCR system. In this paper, we present a novel and efficient technique for Bangla/English script identification with applications to the destination address block of Bangladesh envelope images. The proposed approach is based upon the analysis of connected component profiles extracted from the destination address block images, however, it does not place any emphasis on the information provided by individual characters themselves and does not require any character/line segmentation. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed technique is capable of identifying Bangla/English scripts on the real Bangladesh postal images. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2006.