April 1994

Pattern Recognition
Letters
ELSEVIER Pattern Recognition Letters 15 ( 1994 ) 403-408

A Bayesian neural network for separating similar complex

handwritten Chinese characters
Hong-De Chang a, Jhing-Fa Wang b,., Shye-Chorng Kuo a

a Department of Electrical Engineering, National Cheng Kung University, Tainan, Taiwan 701, ROC
b Institute oflnformation Engineering, National Cheng Kung University, 1 University Road, Tainan, Taiwan 701, ROC
Received 3 September 1992; revised 17 September 1993

Abstract

A Bayesian neural network for separating characters with the same number of linear like strokes and cross-points is proposed.
It is trained by an incremental learning vector quantization algorithm which endows this system with incremental learning
ability.

Key words: Handwritten Chinese character; Neural network; Shape coding; Recognition

I. Introduction tiers which tend to test competing hypotheses se-

Major research activities in character recognition
are now centered on the recognition of handwritten
Chinese characters, which was once considered to be
a very difficult problem and regarded as one of the
ultimate goals of character recognition research. Since
the number of Chinese characters is very large (at
least 5401 daily-used characters), a hierarchical rec-
ognition approach is usually needed for this work; i.e.,
a rough classification stage for a group of similar
characters is first applied and then a recognition
scheme resolves individual identification within a
group. Here we try to use a neural network to distin-
guish a group of characters which contain the same
number of linear like strokes and cross-points.
Interest in neural networks is rapidly growing and
several neural network models have been proposed
for shape classification (Lippmann, 1987; Yong,
1988; Fukushima, 1983). Unlike traditional classi-
* Corresponding author.
quentially, neural networks test the competing hy-
potheses in parallel, thus providing high computation
rates. Additional advantages include robustness and
the ability to adapt or learn. Although neural net-
works have the above merits, they also have the de-
fects of being without incremental learning ability and
taking too much training time. For example, the ex-
perimental results of research (Wang et al., 1991 )
show the training time of a tree-layer backpropaga-
tion neural net model implemented on the ANZA co-
processor board working with an IBM P C / A T com-
patible computer system for 92 Chinese radicals is
428.6 hours. This is impractical in actual conditions.
Here we propose a Bayesian neural network for sep-
arating a group of similar complex characters. It is
trained by an incremental learning vector quantiza-
tion (ILVQ) algorithm, which endows this system
with incremental learning ability and fast training
speed. Experimental results show the proposed Baye-
sian net is a fast and effective method for Separating
similar complex handwritten Chinese characters.

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404 H.-D. Chang et al. /Pattern Recognition Letters 15 (1994) 403-408
2. Bayesian neural network
2.1. Feature vector and a subsidiary feature
The numbers and the distributions of four primi-
tive (horizontal, vertical, left-slash and right-slash)
extracted strokes of the observed character are used
to construct a 12-dimensional feature vector. The
distributions represent the average position and av-
erage length of the primitive strokes. In order to in-
crease the recognition accuracy a subsidiary feature,
the four-corner-code, is introduced to assist the net-
work in cancelling the candidates whose four-corner
shapes do not match the input one. We define eight
types of stroke patterns as shown in Fig. 1 to encode
each comer of an observed character in the sequence
of upper left comer, upper right corner, lower left
corner and lower right comer. According to the out-
most stroke pattern of each corner, a character is en-
coded into four codes which form a four-corner-code.
The code of each corner is represented by one byte
and each bit corresponds to a stroke pattern. A char-
acter may have different four-corner-codes due to
handwriting variations. For example, the codes of the
upper left comer and upper right corner of the char-
acters shown in Fig. 2 are (00000001), (10000000)
and (10000000), (01000000) respectively. There-
fore, we can use the following formula
I-/\ • +C ¢ one PE per cluster which connects to each Gaussian
:vertical stroke • :dot stroke
m :horizontal stroke -~-:cross stroke
/ :right-slash stroke C, :comer
:left-slash stroke ¢ :empty
Fig. 1. Bits and their corresponding stroke patterns.
(~.~(10000000) (10000000) ~(01000000)
Fig. 2. Two different handwriting variations of the character
" 2: "and their two upper comer codes.
b ( i ) = b ( i ) I b~(i),
i = 0 , I ..... 7, J = 1, 2, ..., N , (1)
where N is the number of training patterns and " I "
denotes the logical OR operation, to record all possi-
ble variations. By the above formula, the four-cor-
ner-code of the character " ± " is represented
by ( 10000001 ), ( 11000001 ), (01000000),
(01000000 ).
2. 2. Fundamental architecture
The fundamental architecture of a Bayesian neural
network used in our approach contains three layers:
the input layer, the Gaussian layer and the mixture
layer as shown in Fig. 3. The input layer is broad-
casted to all processing elements (PEs) in the Gaus-
sian layer, and the weights between the input layer
and Gaussian layer all set to 1. In the Gaussian layer,
there initially are Mprocessing elements and each PE
represents one sub-cluster of a Chinese character. We
use the K-means algorithm to classify the training
patterns of a Chinese character into M sub-clusters
according to their feature vectors. Then, we calculate
the distribution of the feature vectors which belong
to the same sub-cluster to form a multivariate normal
distribution. Consequently, there are M individual
multivariate normal distributions for the M sub-clus-
ters in the Gaussian layer. The mixture layer contains
PE by the weighted connections.
The operation of the Bayesian network, serving as
a Bayesian classifier, can be separated into two phases:
the ILVQ algorithm training phase and the recogni-
Mixtureslab
Gaussianslab
AA ......A
Inputslab .......
1 2 N
Fig. 3. The fundamental architecture of a Bayesian neural network.
 H.-D. Changet al. /Pattern Recognition Letters 15 (1994) 403-408
tion phase. During the training phase, each PE cal-
culates the Gaussian probability density between the
input vector and its weight vector. These Gaussian
probability densities are then used to select the PE
with the closest weight vector if its density is above a
threshold. Otherwise, a new PE is created based on
the input vector. In the recognition phase, the Gaus-
sian probability densities are calculated between the
test vector and each PE's weight vector on the Gaus-
sian layer. The cluster conditional probability is ap-
proximated by a mixture of the Gaussian probability
densities that are assigned to the same cluster. The
cluster conditional probability is then weighted by an
a priori probability of the corresponding cluster to
produce the a posteriori probability. Finally, the a
posteriori probability is transformed into a log
distance.
2.3. ILVQ training algorithm
Initially, we use the K-means algorithm to classify
the training patterns of a Chinese character into M
sub-clusters ( M = 3 in our system) according to their
feature vectors. Each sub-cluster forms a multivar-
iate normal distribution. For each successive training
pattern Xk, we calculate the Gaussian probability
density P,.,k(Xk [ W~(m)) between each sub-cluster
W~(m) and the input vector Xk according to
Pm;k(Xk I Wi(m) )
l
(2•)N/2 0-2l;m;n
×exp [ ~ (~.,,-,ui;,,,;,,) ]
m = 1, 2 , . . . , M ,
where N is the dimension of the sub-cluster center and
the input vector, /t~;m;n is the mean of sub-cluster
W R m ) and at;,,;n represents the standard deviation
in W~(m). Then we select the Pj;k=max(P,,;k), m= 1,
2, ..., M, and check whether or not the Pj;k is larger
than a threshold TH. If it is larger than TH, ten Xk is
assigned to the jth sub-cluster and the mean and var-
iance of the jth sub-cluster are adapted, according to
405
# i'j;,, = #'~;" × NUMy + X~,,,
NUMy + 1 , n = 1, 2, 3, ..., N ,
(3)
• 2 (a~j,. + # ~ ; . ) X NUMj + X~.. . 2
(aiu;,) = NUMj + 1 ' - (Pi;j;,) ,
n = 1, 2, 3, ..., N , (4)
N U M 7 = NUMj + 1, (5)
where N U M / i s the total number of the training pat-
terns which belong to the flh sub-cluster. Otherwise,
a new sub-cluster is constructed and Xk stands for the
sub-cluster center. The variance of the new sub-clus-
ter is then defined as
M
E a2m; n
2 m=l
ai;M+l;n-- M , n = 1, 2, 3, ...,N. (6)
3. Experimental results
In order to demonstrate the performance of the
proposed Bayesian neural network, we chose five
groups of similar complex handwritten Chinese char-
acters. The characters of each group contain the same
number of linear like strokes and cross-points. Each
group corresponds to a recognition architecture which
is constructed by the fundamental Bayesian neural
network described previously. This recognition ar-
chitecture contains three parts; Bayesian neural net-
work, arbitration comparator and minimum selec-
tor, as shown in Fig. 4. The part of Bayesian neural
network consists of L fundamental Bayesian neural
networks and each fundamental Bayesian neural net-
work represents a Chinese character. For example, the
(2) chosen group S5F2 contains 18 characters and all of
these characters have 5 linear like strokes and 2 cross-
points as shown in Fig. 5. The number L is equal to
18. The output of each fundamental Bayesian neural
network is the distance between the input unknown
pattern Xk and the reference character. Namely, if Xk
is closest to the ith Chinese character in the network,
then the output of the ith fundamental Bayesian
neural network will be the minimum one. The arbi-
tration comparator uses the following formula
406 H.-D. Chang et al. /Pattern Recognition Letters 15 (1994) 403-408

~iii~i~i!ii~i~Jiiiiii~!iiiiiiiiii~i~i~ii~iiiiiiiii~!~i!i!ii~iiiii~i~!~!i~i~i~iiiiii~i~!!
~ii~iiiiii~iii~i~!i!i!iiiiiiiiiii
iii~iiiiiHiii
!~iiii~iiiiii~i~i~iiiiiiii~iiiii~i~i!!i!!iiiiii~i
bitrauonT itraonI bitraonI comparat~ L comparator
IInniiiiiluii ~
-
~om~~.~ ~ of~o~-~o~e,-o~o~.,
fofUrw-Codrner-code/_
word2 J
,o~-~oo~-~
of wordL f
l
~

Bayesian neural netwo

four:comer- code 1 2 N
of Xk
feature vector of Xk
Fig.4.Therecognitionarchitectureforeachclass.
 H.-D. Chang et al. /Pattern Recognition Letters 15 (1994) 403-408
Fig. 5. The charactersof the class $5F2.
fsR= bS( i ) - b f ( i)'bS( i) , (7)
k=l i
to check whether the four-corner shape of the input
character S is one of the variations of the reference
character R. If the value o f f s n is zero, which means
the input character S and the reference character R
have the same four-corner-code, then pass through the
output of the fundamental Bayesian neural network;
otherwise, set the output of the arbitration compara-
tor at a large value. The minimum selector selects the
output with the minimum value from the arbitration
comparators and identifies the unknown character.
Two different files are used as the test patterns.
Each file contains the five chosen groups of HCC
which are listed in Table 1. The characters of the first
file come from the CCL/HCCR1 (Computer and
Communication Laboratories Handwritten Chinese
Character Recognition) database and each character
has 100 samples which are divided into two equal
parts, one for training and the other for testing. The
second file contains 135 Chinese characters, where
Table 1
The recognitionresults of two test files
Testing pattern
Class a Specified person
Learning set
S3FI 100.0%
S4Fo 98.6%
$5F2 99.8%
85F3 100.0%
SrFo 97.2%
a SmFn represents the class which containsthe characters with m linear like strokes and n cross-points.
407
each character contains 30 samples written by the au-
thors, twenty samples for training and the others for
testing. The recognition results of these two files are
shown in Table 1. The average recognition rates of
95.1% and 84.7% have been obtained for these two
files respectively. The training time of each Bayesian
neural network depends on the number of training
patterns and the number of classes. For instance, the
training time of the network corresponding to the
group $5F2 of the second file containing 360 ( 18 × 20)
training patterns is about 45 seconds based on 486/
33MHZ IBM P C / A T compatible microcomputer.
These training patterns are also used to train a three-
layer backpropagation neural network. The training
time is about 73 minutes under the tolerance 0.3
( Idesired o / p - actual o/pl < 0.3). The comparison
of training times indicates the fast training speed of
the Bayesian neural network.
4. Conclusions
In this paper, we have applied the Bayesian neural
network to recognize similar complex HCCs and
found the training speed of the Bayesian neural net-
work is faster than the backpropagation neural net-
work. It can also be incrementally trained while add-
ing a new character to the network. The experimental
results also show the proposed Bayesian net is effec-
tive. In the recognition of handwritten Chinese char-
acters written by two specified persons and selected
from the CCL/HCCR1 database, the average recog-
nition rates are 95.1% and 84.7% respectively.
CCL/HCCRI data base
Test set Learning set Test set
98.7% 96.6% 89.1%
94.3% 89.4% 82.7%
92.3% 87.3% 83.7%
99.1% 93.6% 88.3%
91.3% 86.5% 79.6%
408 H.-D. Chang et al. /Pattern Recognition Letters 15 (1994) 403-408

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