In the fall of 2006, the University of Maryland, along with various
government and industrial sponsors, invited leading researchers from all
over the world to a two-day Summit on Arabic and Chinese Handwriting
Recognition (SACH 2006). The event acted as a complement to the biennial
Symposium on Document Image Understanding Technology (SDIUT), providing
a focused glimpse into the state of the art in Arabic and Chinese
handwriting recognition. It offered a forum for interaction with
prominent researchers at the forefront of the scientific community and
provided an opportunity for participants to help explore possible
directions of the field. This book is a result of the expansion, peer
review, and revision of selected papers presented at this meeting.
Handwriting recognition remains the Holy Grail of document analysis, and
Arabic and Chinese scripts embrace many of the most significant
challenges. We are pleased to have 16 scientific papers covering the
original topics of handwritten Arabic and Chinese, as well as 2 papers
covering other handwritten scripts. We asked each author to not only
describe the techniques used in addressing the problem, but to attempt
to identify the key research challenges and problems that the community
faces. The result is an impressive collection of manuscripts that
provide various detailed views of the state of research. In this book,
six articles deal directly with Arabic handwriting. - Cheriet provides
an overview of the problems of Arabic recognition and how systems can
use natural language processing techniques to correct errors in
lexicon-based systems.