Quality factors of handwritten characters based on human visual perception

摘要

Abstract: Although various hand-written Kanji character recognition techniques have been developed, they are not yet satisfactory. Hand-written characters can vary in shape so much that the recognition rate depends greatly on their quality. It is very useful to know how humans recognize hand-written characters. Accordingly, we made two kinds of evaluations. First, we carried out a subjective experiment to ascertain whether humans use common criteria for judging character quality or not. Japanese adults were asked to rate the character quality on a 5 point- scale. The results suggested that the subjects used common criteria. Second, to find the character' key parts, we analyzed the subject's eye movement as the quality was evaluated. The experiments revealed that the parts on which the subject's attention was concentrated were: areas of high stroke density, the positioning of the stroke and its spacing, and character composition. Based on the results of these experiments, we have proposed new measures for stroke, pixel, line width, aspect ratio, and character balance. It was indicated that the measures are useful factors for determining the quality of hand-written Kanji characters.!