sets and systems

ELSEVIER Fuzzy Sets and Systems 100 (1998) 59 70

A fuzzy rule-based system for handwritten Chinese characters recognition based on radical extraction
Hahn-Ming Lee *'a, Chiung-Wei Huang b, Chung-Chieh Sheu a
aDepartment of Electronic Engineering, National Taiwan Institute of Technology, 43, Keelung Rd., Sec., 4, Taipei 106, Taiwan, ROC bDepartment of Electronic Engineering, Chien-Hsin College of Technology and Commerce, Taiwan, ROC

Received July 1996; revised April 1997

Abstract In this paper, a fuzzy rule-based system for handwritten Chinese characters recognition (HCCR) based on radical extraction is proposed. Since the writings of handwritten Chinese characters vary a lot, we adopt fuzzy set theory to deal with the recognition of these fuzzy patterns. Candidates of strokes are provided with confidence values to obtain more reliable and accurate results. Furthermore, hierarchical fuzzy rule sets that represent the character structures are used to combine the extracted strokes into compound strokes or radicals. The flexible expansion ability thus provided is very promising. Also, since the number of rules in a fuzzy system is much less than that in a general rule-based system, the computation effort is not difficult. An average of 99.63 % recognition rate of 542 test categories that are selected from the 100th sample set of HCCRBASE (character image database provided by CCL, ITRI, Taiwan) is obtained. The experimental results not only verify the feasibility of the proposed system, but also suggest that applying fuzzy set theory to HCCR is an efficient and promising approach. 1998 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved
Keywords: Fuzzy set theory; Handwritten Chinese character recognition; Preclassification; Radical extraction

1. Introduction The recognition of handwritten Chinese character (HCCR) is of great importance as an automatic input method for Chinese electronic data processing (EDP) [7, 12, 18]. A H C C R system can serve as a friendly m a n - m a c h i n e interface for people who are not familiar with computers. It also has wide applications in m a n y areas, such as office automation (OA), Computer Aided Instruction (CAI),

* Corresponding author. E-mail: hmlee@et.ntit.edu.tw.

handwritten document reader (voice output), handwritten document translator (language translator), and so on. However, due to the characteristics of handwritten Chinese characters, i.e., large character sets of characters (at least 5401 for daily use), high degree of complexity in structure, and various writing styles, the preclassification technique [2, 24] (i.e., extracting features from Chinese character before recognition) is usually needed. In addition, a Chinese character can be decomposed into radicals and strokes (e.g., the Chinese character " , ~ " can be decomposed into a radical 'I" and two strokes 0-). Thus, choosing radicals as the

0165-0114/98/$19.00 1998 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved PII: S0165-01 14(97)00148-6

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preclassification information is an intuitive and efficient method I-6, 10, 17]. Since the writing styles of handwritten characters vary a lot in stroke length, stroke type and stroke distance, they completely meet the fuzzy characteristics. A small number of fuzzy rules can be used to deal with the fuzziness of human concepts or controls [1, 14]. That is, the number of fuzzy rules needed and the computation effort are usually less than that of a general rulebased system. Therefore, we propose a fuzzy rulebased system for HCCR based on the structure analysis, i.e., radical extraction. Although there are more than 40000 Chinese characters in the Kang-Xi Dictionary [4], they can be categorized into about 214 radical groups [25]. Each radical group contains 5 200 characters. This is very reliable information on the structure of Chinese characters. Thus, if we adopt radicals as the preelassification information, the recognition will be more effective and the results will be more reliable. Also, using this kind of structure information would enable the recognition system to enhance its capability step by step. That is, a system dealing with 20 radical groups can be extended to dealing with 50 radicals or even more by only adding the structure knowledge. The flexible expansion ability is very promising. Based on the structure, Chinese characters can be classified into special characters, indivisible characters and divisible characters [4]. The divisible characters can be further classified into left right characters and top-bottom characters. For example, "//~" is a left right character, and "Y~" is a top-bottom one. That is, divisible characters can be decomposed into radicals and strokes easily, e.g., , ~ i s a radical and ,~ is a primitive stroke. In general, a handwritten primitive stroke of a Chinese character may have various degrees on different stroke types. For example, a stroke s may have degree 0.4 as horizontal line and degree 0.7 as right-slanting line. Thus, we may treat this stroke as a horizontal line or a right-slanting line. In this way to keep the candidates of strokes, radical extraction will be more reasonable and reliable. This is why the fuzzy set theory should be applied to the HCCR. Besides, fuzzy rules are also used to combine the extracted strokes for obtaining compound strokes or radicals. That is, we embed the

structure of Chinese characters in fuzzy rules. Since hierarchical rule sets are provided, the computation effort is not heavy [271. Also input patterns that are not legal Chinese characters (caused by thinning or segmentation errors) will be rejected. Following this introduction, is a detailed description of the proposed system. Section 3 contains the rule explanation and examples. To check the validity of our approach, experimental results are provided in the fourth section. Section 5 outlines the advantages, limitations and related works. The final section gives a conclusion.

2. System architecture
The architecture of the proposed system, shown in Fig. 1, is composed of a preprocessor and a fuzzy radical extractor. The preprocessor deals with normalization, thinning [3], and radical segmentation. The fuzzy radical extractor is organized as the primitive stroke extractor, compound stroke/radical extractor, and a stroke/radical pool. The primitive stroke extractor aims at extracting basic strokes of handwritten Chinese characters from inputs. It also assigns confidence values to the extracted strokes according to the membership definition for each stroke type, and stores the information in the stroke/radical pool. The compound stroke/radical extractor combines the extracted strokes appropriately into compound strokes or a radical by applying fuzzy rules. Finally, the obtained radicals are combined into a Chinese character.

2.1. Preprocessor
Once an input is provided, the procedure of normalization helps to get a uniform character bitmap size, e.g., 100 x 100. The normalization procedure tolerates the size variations caused by writers' writing habits. Thinning is then applied to get a thinned character image. It ignores the variations in stroke width that often varies while using different writing tools. Afterwards, radical segmentation proceeds to segment the normalized character image to obtain the radical block area (i.e., the area that a radical occupies). A widely-used

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61

I Prt~calitlveStroke/

Extractor

Stroke/

Radical Recognition
Result

ompQund Stroke/~'-

Pool

dlb.alExtractor

t
Fu22yRadlcalExtractor

Fig. 1. The proposed system architecture.

method, i.e. the histogram projection method [19], is used to accomplish this function. Sometimes it is not easy to segment the radical block well by using only the non-thinned image or only the thinned image. Thus, we adopt both of them in the segmentation phase to obtain a more accurate segmentation result.
2.2. Stroke extracting strategy

After the radical block is identified, the stroke extracting strategy will be applied to extract strokes from the thinned radical block. The stroke extracting strategy uses a two-pass fast extraction strategy instead of a window-oriented tracing approach [-20] which might cause the time-consumption problem. Pass I checks the character image row by row and extracts out vertical strokes and slanting strokes. In pass II, the character image is examined by column-oriented tracing approach and the horizontal strokes are extracted. A combining phase then proceeds to combine the appropriate strokes into corner strokes (a corner stroke is composed of two primitive strokes, and it has a direction change in its stroke contour). Finally, it outputs the extraction results.
2.3. Primitive stroke extractor

strokes, many researchers have spent much effort on methods to decompose the character structure. Thus, there are many key-in methods based on the structure decomposition for Chinese characters, e.g., Changjei [22], Dayi, Wuhsiami, Four-corner [-29], etc. In Taiwan, Changjei method is widely used. It almost provides a unique code for every Chinese character. Based on its decomposition of Chinese character structure, we choose horizontal (HL), vertical (VL), left-slanting (LS), right-slanting (RS), and corner-strokes (CS) as primitive features. One particular stroke type, the so-called dot stroke, defined in the Changjei method is not used in our system since the writing habits vary a lot. This can be handled well by detecting the stroke slope and angle. The fuzzy rules are created based on this principle. In Table 1, all the primitive strokes defined in the primitive stroke extractor are listed. Related membership definition for recognizing handwritten numerals and image description are given by Siy [23] and Pal [21]. Our membership definition for each stroke type is given as follows: (1) Horizontal: IO(x)l < 45 "), others, where 0 (x) denotes the angle between line x and the horizontal line.

The Primitive Stroke Extractor aims at extracting primitive strokes from the radical block. Since Chinese characters are constructed of radicals and

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Table 1 Primitivestrokes. Sevenprimitivestrokesof the Chinesecharacters used in our system Stroke shape Stroke type Horizontal Abbreviation HL

(4) Right-slanting: #is (x) = ~4~ , I0 (x)] ~< 90 , others, where 0 (x) denotes the angle between line x and the horizontal line. (5) Corner strokes: (right-corner, left-corner, and bottom-corner) ~es(X) =

Vertical

VL

Left-slanting

LS

I~ ( len(lattersubstrke)~ in 1, len(former substroke)/' line x has a corner point, others,

where len(()) denotes the length of the specified stroke. The corner stroke defined here is a consecutive stroke that has a corner inside. That is, there is a direction change in the whole stroke, for example L., -). For convenience, the substroke before the direction change is called the former substroke, and the other one is called the latter substroke. The important features of a corner stroke are its corner point and the length of the latter substroke. One stroke without corner point is undoubtedly not a corner stroke. Based on this, we use the following heuristic to define a corner stroke: (1) If a stroke x has a corner point and the latter substroke of x is longer than its former substroke, then this stroke is definitely a corner stroke, i.e., the membership function takes value 1. (2) If a stroke x has a corner point and the latter substroke of x is not longer than its former substroke, then the membership function takes value len(latter substroke)/len(former substroke). (3) Otherwise, the stroke x is definitely not a corner stroke, i.e., the membership function takes value 0. That is the reason that we define the membership function of corner strokes in this way. Fig. 2 shows the range for the horizontal, vertical, left-slanting, and right-slanting. To commit the fuzzy characteristics, a special c~ level cut degree, named REGULARITY, is used to determine the regularity of handwritten characters. If the degree of the extracted primitive stroke for one specific stroke type does not meet the requirement of

Right-slanting

RS

Right-corner

RC

Left-corner

LC

,/
(2) Vertical:

Bottom-corner

BC

45 < IO(x)l < 135 , others,

where 0 (x) denotes the angle between line x and the horizontal line. (3) Left-slanting:

I1 Pts (x)= 0

0 (x)-4S5--~ -135

90 ~< [O(x)] ~< 180 , others,

where 0 (x) denotes the angle between line x and the horizontal line.

H.-M. Lee et al. / Fuzzy Sets and Systems 100 (1998) 59-70 Y Y Y Y

63

.--X

vX

(a)

(b)

(c)

(d)

Fig. 2. The range for the first four stroke types. (a) Horizontal. (b) Vertical. (c) Left-Slanting. (d) Right-Slanting. It m e a n s that if one stroke settles d o w n in the shaded area, it gets the chance to be a candidate of that stroke type.

level, it would not be considered as a candidate of this stroke type.

(3) Midpoint of a specified stroke: midpoint(S)=(Xl +x2 2 '

Yl

2.4. Compound stroke/radical extractor

The compound stroke/radical extractor uses hierarchical rule sets to combine strokes into compound strokes or radicals, and then to form Chinese characters from radicals. During extraction, the primitive stroke extractor extracts primitive strokes and stores them in the stroke/radical pool. After that, the compound stroke/radical extractor fetches the extracted information from stroke/radical pool and examines the connection type of the two consecutively-fetched strokes to check if they can be combined. Fuzzy rules are applied in this phase. Repeating the fetching and combination, the radicals will be obtained and the Chinese characters will be formed. Thus, the determination of the connection type is very important. Before we discuss this, some measurements on stroke distance and the calculation of midpoints of strokes will be given first. (1) Length of a specified stroke: len(S) = x/(xx
- - x 2 ) 2 "4- (Yl - - Y2) 2 ,

+Y2) 2 '

where (Xl, Yl) and (x2, Y2) denote the coordinates of the starting point and the terminating point of stroke S, respectively. For the convenience of later definition, we let A, B, C denote the starting point, the midpoint, and the terminating point of stroke S1, respectively. Also let D, E, F denote the starting point, the midpoint, and the terminating point of stroke $2, respectively. (4) Minimum distance between the end points of two specified strokes: minDistance_of_end.points (S 1, $2) = min(len(A, D), len(A, F), len(C, D), len(C, F)). (5) Minimum distance between the midpoint of one stroke to the end points of the other stroke: minDistance_of_midpoint.to.end_points (S 1, $2) = min(len(B, D), len(B, F), len(E, A), len(E, C)). (6) Minimum distance between two specified strokes: minDistance (S 1, $2) = min(minDistance_of_end.points(S1, $2), minDistance.of_midpoint_to_end.points(S 1, $2)). Though we only define the minimum distance between two straight strokes, it can be generalized into calculating the minimum distance between a straight stroke and a corner stroke. The reason

where (xl,yl), and ( x 2 , Y 2 ) denote the coordinates of the starting point and the terminating point of stroke S, respectively. (2) Distance between two specified points: len(A,B)
= N/(X1 - - X2) 2 --1- (Yl - Y2) 2 ,

where (x~, y~), and (x2,y2) denote the coordinates of point A and point B, respectively.

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for this is that a corner stroke is composed of two straight strokes. Thus, the minimum distance between the straight stroke S1 and a corner stroke $2 can be translated into min(minDistance(S1, S2A), minDistance(S1, S2B)), where S2A and S2B are the two straight strokes of $2. Also, the generalization for calculating minimum distance between two corner strokes is done in the same way. In what follows, we discuss the definition of the connection types. Fig. 3 shows the examples of the connection types. During the determination of the connection type, the first step is to check if the two strokes are crossed together by using the constraints ((xl ~< X3 ~ X2) or (Xl <~x4 <~x2)) and ((Y3 ~< Yt ~< Y4) or (Y3 ~< Y2 ~< Y4)). This definition is based on the relation of coordinates of two crossed strokes. Fig. 3(e) shows the case of the CROSS connection. However, if they are not crossed, the minDistance(S1, $2) is used to decide whether the connection type is meeting or apart. Furthermore, for obtaining a reasonable result and reducing the computation effort, the ranges of M E E T and APART are overlapped instead of being defined as fuzzy terms. Thus, the connection types of two strokes S1 and $2 are defined as Connection_Type(S1, $2): CROSS ((xl ~ x3 ~ x2) or (xl ~< x4 ~< x2)) and

MEET APART

minDistance(S 1, $2) ~< *min (len(S1), len ($2)). minDistance(S 1, $2) > " min (len(S 1), len ($2)),

where (xl, yl) and (x2, Y2) denote the end points of one specified stroke, and (x3, Y3) (x4, Y4) denote the end points of the other stroke. Once the connection type of two consecutive strokes is determined, fuzzy rules that represent the character structure will be applied to combine them. After the strokes are combined as a compound stroke, the stroke type degree will be reevaluated as CombinationDegree(S 1, $2) = min(deg(S 1), deg(S2)), where deg(()) denotes the stroke type degree of the specified stroke. The radical combinations are done in the same way.

3. Fuzzyrulesandexamples
After the primitive strokes are extracted from the thinned radical block, the Compound stroke/radical extractor fetches them from the stroke/radical pool according to the order of extraction. Then the compound stroke/radical extractor determines the connection type of consecutive strokes and combines them under the control of fuzzy rules. For example, if there is a right-slanting stroke and a vertical stroke connected in M E E T type, they can be combined as the '1' radical according to the

((Y3 ~< Yt ~< Y4) or (Y3 ~< Y2 ~< Y4))-

(xl'yl)3 (x41~'y2)
(a)
(~ ~) ~)

(e)

Fig. 3. (a) is an example of APART based on our definition.(b) and (c) are all treated as the type of MEET. It takes advantage of tolerating the variations caused by writing habits or thinning distortions. Moreover,(d) is the example of CROSS and (e) describesthe reason we use constraints, ((xl ~<x3 ~<x2) o r (x 1 ~ X ~-~XZ) ) and ((Y3~<Yl ~<Y4) or (Y3 ~ Y2 ~ ~ in the equation of connectiontype 4 <Y4.)), for the CROSS.

H.-M. Lee et al. / Fuzzy Sets and Systems lO0 (1998) 59 70

65

Fig. 4. Rule architecture of the proposed system. Since the rule structure is hierarchical, the computation effort needed is not heavy. Also, the expansion capability of rules is very flexible.

following rule: If $1 is RS, $2 is VL, and Connection.type is MEET then combine_Sl_and-S2 as ,,,1',,. From the previous description, it goes without saying that we only apply appropriate rules for strokes combination during inference. That is, we do not try to match each rule in the rule base. Furthermore, since the hierarchical rule structure is provided, the computation effort does not increase in proportion to the number of rules. Fig. 4 depicts the rule architecture of the proposed system. In the proposed system, 96 fuzzy rules are used to deal with 20 radicals. Some fuzzy rules used are shown in Fig. 5. In Fig. 5, based on the character structure, we can easily define a rule for radical -t-- in Fig. 5(a). Fig. 5(b) is the case that radical -4- and a horizontal stroke are combined into the radical 4-. In the same way, Fig. 5(c) is the rule for radical ~t_, and (d) is the rule for 7k . Since only 4 rules are used to deal with 4 radicals, it shows the simplicity and efficiency of the proposed system. We use the following example to illustrate how the extractor extracts and combines strokes. Assume REGULARITY = 0.7,

( )

Et
(a)

(b)

Cnen on~~ c
(c) (a')

Fig. 5. S~me rule examples. (a) rule for -I-. (b) rule for 4-. tc) rule for 71". (d) rule for ~ . It shows the simplicity and efficiency of the proposed system since 4 rules are used to deal with 4 radicals.

An example. ,(~__
1. " , / " is extracted out. The degree of RS is 0.93, and is 0.11 for VL. 2. "l " is extracted out. The degree of VL is 0.91.

3. Combine previous extracted strokes as ",,(", the combination degree is 0.91. Another combination for VL(0.11) with second VL (0.91) is impossible, because the degree for first

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VL is below the R E G U L A R I T Y and there is no such combination rule. According to this concept, the following characters can be recognized correctly:
/1/, -'r'~.

4. Experimental results To verify the feasibility of the proposed method, a widely used handwritten Chinese character database, named HCCRBASE provided by Computer and Communication Laboratories, IRTI, Taiwan, is used to conduct our experiments. The database contains 5401 commonly used handwritten Chinese character categories. They are written by about 2600 persons and each character category contains 214 to 284 writing characters. All

the characters are reordered in script regularity for each category. That is, the first one-third characters of each category are written in a regular manner, and the last one third characters of each category are written in a more cursive approach. For evaluating the performance of the proposed system, frequently used 20 radicals with 542 categories are collected by gathering the 100th sample set of selected HCCRBASE characters. Since it is inconvenient to print all the 542 tested handwritten categories, Fig. 6 shows them in a printed form. Also the 20 most frequently used radicals are listed in Table 2. In Table 3, the detailed recognition results for each radical group are listed. Since the category number for each radical is not the same in the 5401 commonly used Chinese characters, the numbers of test characters are different. In the 542 tested

Fig. 6. 542 tested character categories in printed font. Table 2 The 20 most frequently used radicals

,I

H.-M. Lee et al. / Fuzzy Sets and Systems 100 (1998) 59-70 Table 3 Experimental results. An average of 99.63% recognition rate is obtained. 6 characters are rejected and 2 have failed Results radical Regularity = 0.1 No. of test characters 30 1[ 15 35 ~F_ 1~ i 35 35 30 35 35 ,~ [~ it 35 35 25 25 35 20
-

67

No. of success 30 15 35 35 35 30 35 33 35 32 24 24 35 20 10 20 10 17 35 24

Recognition rate 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100%, 100% 100%* 100%, 96.00% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 96.00%

character categories, 6 are rejected and 2 are failed. That is, an average of 99.63 % (534/536) recognition rate is obtained, thus the feasibility of the proposed system is confirmed. Also, it suggests that applying fuzzy set theory to the recognition of handwritten Chinese characters is an effective and promising approach.

5. Discussion

Based on the experimental results shown above, we find that the proposed method is feasible. In what follows, we discuss the characteristics of the proposed system.

5.1. Stroke candidates

Since fuzzy set theory is adopted, its outstanding characteristic, i.e., candidates provision, is demonstrated to deal with the variations of writing styles. Thus, it makes the recognition results more reliable and accurate. Besides, under the adjustment of REGULARITY, the number of candidates of strokes-type provision can be controlled easily. Since fuzzy rules will exclude impossible stroke or radical combinations, lower REGULARITY is preferred.

5.2. Computation effort

Since we define the stroke type and the stroke relation as simply as possible, it does not take much time to detect the stroke shapes and stroke relations for handwritten Chinese characters. That is, it is not necessary to compare detailed information of inputs with the built-in prototype feature base. It makes the strokes extraction and combination much easier to be performed. Besides, since hierarchical rule sets are used to produce the stroke and radical combinations, the total computation effort is decreased a great deal.

10 20 10

-~..1~

s/~ ---',
Q

17 35 25

5.3. Extensibility
Since rules are used to show the character structures, the capability can be extended by enhancing combination rules appropriately. For example, one

* Some characters are rejected.

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may extend the capability of a system from dealing with 20 radicals to 50 radicals or even more. That is, the expansion capability of the proposed system is very flexible. Thus, using this kind of hierarchical processing and extensible strategy is a promising method for recognizing such a huge amount of Chinese characters.
5.4. Thinning

Like other systems, poor thinning results will also cause the stroke extraction failure in our system. Once the strokes are incorrectly extracted, the proposed system would possibly return a wrong radical for the input character. We hope that more robust thinning algorithms or even hardware implementations could be developed for overcoming this well-known issue.
5.5. Stroke extraction

Like other systems that treat strokes as features, it is possible to incorrectly extract a radical from cursive handwriting or complex characters [28]. Since this paper deals only with divisible characters, indivisible character recognition are left as our future work. Thus, further study on the stroke extracting strategy is needed for accomplishing a robust Chinese characters recognition system.
5.6. Rules

Rules need to be generated for the proposed method. However, it is needless to compare the information of inputs with built-in prototypes. Besides, based on the structure of Chinese characters, the number of rules needed is small. The reason is that there are many common sub-structures in Chinese characters. For example, a rule for dealing with radical -4- can also be used to deal with radical 4-.
5. 7. Related works

Mao and Kuo [18] proposed a radical-partitioning neural network system for large-volume

Chinese characters. They use a simple method, named normalized dot products, to identify the radical of an input printed character. Then a selected backpropagation neural network subsystem gets the chance to deal with the category determination. They use radicals as the preclassification information. It has an excellent expansion capability. However, they focus only on printed Chinese characters. For a handwritten Chinese character, the normalized dot product method and the BP sub-systems would obtain a poor performance. Hsieh and Lee proposed an on-line modelguided method [8] and a probabilistic stroke-based algorithm [9]. They are based on the stroke writing sequence, strokes, and stroke relations from inputs. For each input character, strokes are extracted by a tree searching method. Then an optimization matching in a multi-stage directed graph is adopted to determine the category of the input character. However, since the structure knowledge of characters is embedded in the graph, the matching time is an important issue while the number of characters exceeds to some extent. The average recognition time they reported for the two methods, 4.7 sec per character [8] and 10 sec per character [9], meets our consideration. Cheng and Hsu [5] proposed a fuzzy approach on the HCCR. They treat distances and angles between two strokes as fuzzy terms. A linear programming matching method is used to obtain the category for an input character. Since the shape of a stroke, e.g., horizontal type, vertical type, or slanting type, is also an important information for Chinese characters, the performance will be enhanced if it could be applied into the system. Huang et al. [10] introduced the constraint graph to represent printed Chinese characters. Each character pattern is described based on stroke level, component level, and character level. Relaxation matching and heuristic search are then applied to solve the constraint-based optimization problem. However, the stable features they used are not suitable for HCCR. In Table 4, we give a listing on the characteristics of the mentioned related works and our proposed method.

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69

Table 4 The characteristics of related works and proposed method Method Item Character type Extensibility Suitable for large character set Character database Features Character tested Method used Mao & Kuo Printed Good Yes Printed Pattern 1000 Radicalpartitioned neural network 80% Hiesh & Lee Handwritten Fair No HCCR 1* Strokes 540 Multi-stage directed graph 92.8% Cheng & Hsu Handwritten Fair No ETL-8** Stroke angle and location 881 Linear programming matching method 96% Huang, Gu & Wu Printed Good Yes Printed Strokes 3851 Relaxation matching & heuristic search 95-99% Proposed method Handwritten Good Yes HCCR3*** Strokes 542 Hierarchical fuzzy rules 99.63%

Recognition rate

* HCCRBASE Version 1. ** Character database provided by NTT, Japan. *** HCCRBASE Version 3.

6. Conclusions
A new m e t h o d for h a n d w r i t t e n Chinese c h a r a c ters r e c o g n i t i o n b a s e d on radical e x t r a c t i o n has been p r o p o s e d . It takes a d v a n t a g e of fuzzy set theory, a n d meets the needs of d e a l i n g with h a n d written Chinese c h a r a c t e r s whose writings are fuzzy in nature. Since only a few fuzzy rules are required a n d hierarchical rule sets are used, the c o m p u t a t i o n effort is n o t difficult. Besides, the cap a b i l i t y of the whole system can be e n h a n c e d by increasing the n u m b e r of fuzzy rules a p p r o p r i a t e l y . The p r o p o s e d m e t h o d is of great flexibility. Experim e n t s on 542 c h a r a c t e r categories selected from the 100th s a m p l e set of H C C R B A S E show n o t only the feasibility of p r o p o s e d m e t h o d , but also suggest that a p p l y i n g fuzzy set t h e o r y to the r e c o g n i t i o n of Chinese c h a r a c t e r s is an efficient a n d p r o m i s i n g method.

This work was supported by N a t i o n a l Science Council, Taiwan, u n d e r G r a n t N S C 84-2213-E011-038.

References
[1] Z. Cao, A. Kandel, Applicability of some fuzzy implication operators, Fuzzy Sets and Systems 31 (1989) 151 186. [2] H.D. Chang, J.F. Wang, Preclassification for handwritten chinese character recognition by a peripheral shape coding method, Pattern Recognition 26 (1993) 711-719. I-3] Y.S. Chen, W.H. Hsu, A modified fast parallel algorithm for thinning digital patterns, Pattern Recognition Len. 7 (1988) 99 106. [4] F.H. Cheng, W.H. Hsu, Research on Chinese OCR in Taiwan, Internat. J. Pattern Recognition and Artificial Intell. 5 (1991) 139-164. I-5] F.H. Cheng, W.H. Hsu, C.A. Chen, Fuzzy Approach to solve the recognition problem of handwritten Chinese characters, Pattern Recognition 22 (1989) 133 141. 1-6] F.H. Cheng, W.H. Hsu, M.C. Kuo, Recognition of handprinted Chinese characters via stroke relaxation, Pattern Recognition 26 (1993) 579-593. 1-7] T.H. Hildebrandt, W. Liu, Optical recognition of handwritten Chinese characters: advances since 1980, Pattern Recognition 26 (1993) 205 225. [8] C.C. Hsieh, H.J. Lee, Off-line recognition of handwritten Chinese characters by on-line model-guided matching, Pattern Recognition 25 (1992) 1337 1352.

Acknowledgements
The a u t h o r s are highly thankful to the referees for their helpful suggestions on revising this paper.

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