Pioneer dataset and recognition of Handwritten Pashto characters using Convolution Neural Networks

Abstract

This paper presents an efficient OCR system for the recognition of offline Pashto isolated characters. The lack of an appropriate dataset makes it challenging to match against a reference and perform recognition. This research work addresses this problem by developing a medium-size database that comprises 4488 samples of handwritten Pashto character; that can be further used for experimental purposes. In the proposed OCR system the recognition task is performed using convolution neural network. The performance analysis of the proposed OCR system is validated by comparing its results with artificial neural network and support vector machine based on zoning feature extraction technique. The results of the proposed experiments shows an accuracy of 56% for the support vector machine, 78% for artificial neural network, and 80.7% for the proposed OCR system. The high recognition rate shows that the OCR system based on convolution neural network performs best among the used techniques.