Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Writer identification using machine learning approaches: a comprehensive review

  • Published:
Multimedia Tools and Applications Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Handwriting is one of the most common types of questioned writing encountered and frequently attracts the attention in litigation. Contrary to the physiological characteristics, handwriting is a behavioral characteristic thus no two individuals with mature handwriting are exactly alike or an individual cannot produce the others writing exactly. Writing behavior and individualities are examined for similarities for both specimen and questioned document, thus, it is very efficient and effective strategy for biometrics. In this paper, we present a comprehensive review of writer identification methods and intend to provide taxonomy of dataset, feature extraction methods, as well as classification (conventional and deep learning based) for writer identification. For ease of reader, we grouped the discussion into English, Arabic, Western and Other languages from script prospective, whereas, from algorithm and methods perspective, we grouped the discussion with respect to implementation steps sequence. In the end, we highlighted the challenges and open research issues in the field of writer identification. Finally, we also suggest future direction.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5
Fig. 6
Fig. 7

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. h ttp://www.buffalo.edu/

  2. http://www.inf.unibe.ch/

  3. http://www.kfupm.edu.sa/default.aspx

  4. https://www.tu-braunschw

  5. https://www.ifn.ing.tu-bs.de/en/ifn/

  6. http://www.enit.rnu.tn/

  7. http://www.cedar.buffalo.edu/Databases/JOCR/.

References

  1. Abdelhaleem A, Droby A, Asi A, Kassis M, Al Asam R, El-sanaa J (2017) Wahd: a database for writer identification of arabic historical documents. In: Arabic Script Analysis and Recognition (ASAR), 1st International Workshop on, pp. 64–68. IEEE

  2. Abdi MN, Khemakhem M (2015) A model-based approach to offline text-independent Arabic writer identification and verification. Pattern Recognition p. 18901903

  3. Abdi MN, Khemakhem M, Ben-Abdallah H (2009) A novel approach for offline Arabic writer identification based on stroke feature combination. In: Computer and Information Sciences, 2009. ISCIS 2009. 24th International Symposium on, pp. 597–600. IEEE

  4. Adak C, Chaudhuri BB, Blumenstein M (2017) Writer identification and verification from intra-variable individual handwriting. arXiv preprint arXiv:1708.03361

  5. Ahmed AA, Hasan HR, Hameed FA, Al-Sanjary OI (2017) Writer identification on multi-script handwritten using optimum features. Kurdistan Journal of Applied Research 2(3):178–185

    Article  Google Scholar 

  6. Ahmed AA, Sulong G (2014) Arabic writer identification: A review of literature. Journal of Theoretical & Applied Information Technology

  7. Al Maadeed S, Ayouby W, Hassaïıne A, Aljaam JM (2012) QUWI: An Arabic and english handwriting dataset for offline writer identification. In: Frontiers in Handwriting Recognition (ICFHR), International Conference on, pp. 746–751. IEEE

  8. Alamri H, Sadri J, Suen CY, Nobile N (2008) A novel comprehensive database for Arabic offline handwriting recognition. In: Proceedings of 11th International Conference on Frontiers in Handwriting Recognition, ICFHR, pp. 664–669

  9. Al-Dmour A, Abu Zitar R (2007) Arabic writer identification based on hybrid spectral– statistical measures. Journal of Experimental & Theoretical Artificial Intelligence 19(4):307–332

    Article  Google Scholar 

  10. Al-Ma’adeed S, Elliman D, Higgins CA (2002) A data base for Arabic handwritten text recognition research. In: Frontiers in Handwriting Recognition, Proceedings. Eighth International Workshop on, p. 485–489. IEEE

  11. Al-Ma’adeed S, Mohammed E, Al Kassis D, Al-Muslih F (2008) Writer identification using edge-based directional probability distribution features for Arabic words. In: Computer Systems and Applications, AICCSA-08. IEEE/ACS International Conference on, p. 582–590. IEEE

  12. Al-Maadeed S, Hassaine A, Bouridane A, Tahir MA (2016) Novel geometric features for offline writer identification. Pattern Anal Applic 19(3):699–708

    Article  Google Scholar 

  13. Amaral AMM, Freitas CO, Bortolozzi F (2012) The graphometry applied to writer identification. In: Proceedings of the International Conference on Image Processing, Computer Vision, and Pattern Recognition (IPCV), p. 1. The Steering Committee of the World Congress in Computer Science, Computer Engineering and Applied Computing (WorldComp)

  14. Amaral AMM, Freitas CO, Bortolozzi F (2013) Multiple graphometric features for writer identification as part of forensic handwriting analysis. In: Proceedings of the International Conference on Image Processing, Computer Vision, and Pattern Recognition (IPCV), p. 1. The Steering Committee of the World Congress in Computer Science, Computer Engineering and Applied Computing (WorldComp)

  15. Amend K (1980) Handwriting analysis: The complete basic book. New Page Books

  16. Arazi B (1977) Handwriting identification by means of run-length measurements. IEEE Trans. Syst., Man and. Cybernetics 7(12):878–881

    Article  Google Scholar 

  17. Arazi B (1983) Automatic handwriting identification based on the external properties of the samples. IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics 13(4):635–642

    Article  Google Scholar 

  18. Asi A, Abdalhaleem A, Fecker D, Märgner V, El-Sana J (2017) On writer identification for Arabic historical manuscripts. International Journal on Document Analysis and Recognition (IJDAR) p. 173–187

  19. Awaida S, Mahmoud S (2011) Writer identification of Arabic handwritten digits. Universit¨atsbibliothek Dortmund

  20. Awaida, S.M., Mahmoud, S.A. (2012) State of the art in offline writer identification of handwritten text and survey of writer identification of Arabic text. Educational Research and Reviews 4–45

  21. Awaida SM, Mahmoud SA (2013) Writer identification of Arabic text using statistical and structural features. Cybernetics and Systems 57–76

  22. Baghshah MS, Shouraki SB, Kasaei S (2006) A novel fuzzy classifier using fuzzy LVQ to recognize online Persian handwriting. In: Information and Communication Technologies, 2006. ICTTA’06. 2nd, vol. 1, pp. 1878–1883. IEEE

  23. Bay H, Ess A, Tuytelaars T, Van Gool L (2008) Speeded-up robust features (surf). Computer Vision and Image Understanding 346–359

  24. Bensefia A, Paquet T, Heutte L (2003) Information retrieval based writer identification. PRIS, p. 56–63

  25. Bensefia A, Paquet T, Heutte L (2005) Handwritten document analysis for automatic writer recognition. ELCVIA: Electronic Letters on Computer Vision and Image Analysis 72–86

  26. Bensefia A, Paquet T, Heutte L (2005) A writer identification and verification system. Pattern Recognition Letters 2080–2092

  27. Bertolini D, Oliveira LS, Sabourin R (2016) Multi-script writer identification using dissimilarity. In: Pattern Recognition (ICPR), 23rd International Conference on, p. 3025–3030. IEEE

  28. Bertolini D, Oliveira LS, Sabourin R (2016) Multi-script writer identification using dissimilarity. In: International Conference on Pattern Recognition (ICPR), p. 3020–3025

  29. bin Abdl KM, Hashim SZM (2009) Handwriting identification: a direction review. In: Signal and Image Processing Applications (ICSIPA), 2009 IEEE International Conference on, pp. 459–463. IEEE

  30. Bisquerra AF (2009) Writer identification by combination of f Graphical Features in the Framework of old Handwritten Music Scores. Ph.D. thesis, Autonomous University of Barcelona

  31. Blankers V, Niels R, Vuurpijl L (2007) Writer identification by means of explainable features: shapes of loop and lead-in strokes. Proc. of BNAIC 17–24

  32. Bradford RR, Bradford R (1992) Introduction to handwriting examination and identification. Nelson-Hall Publishers, Chicago

    Google Scholar 

  33. Brink A, Bulacu M, Schomaker L (2008) How much handwritten text is needed for text- independent writer verification and identification. In: Pattern Recognition, 2008. ICPR 2008. 19th International Conference on, pp. 1–4. IEEE

  34. Bulacu ML (2007) Statistical pattern recognition for automatic writer identification and verification. Ph.D. thesis, University of Groningen

  35. Bulacu M, Schomaker L (2003) Writer style from oriented edge fragments. In: International Conference on Computer Analysis of Images and Patterns, pp. 460–469. Springer

  36. Bulacu M, Schomaker L (2005) A comparison of clustering methods for writer identification and verification. In: Document Analysis and Recognition, Proceedings. Eighth International Conference on, p. 1275–1279. IEEE

  37. Bulacu M, Schomaker L (2006) Combining multiple features for text-independent writer identification and verification. In: Tenth International Workshop on Frontiers in Handwriting Recognition. Suvisoft

  38. Bulacu M, Schomaker L (2007) Automatic handwriting identification on medieval documents. In: Image Analysis and Processing, ICIAP-07. 14th International Conference on, pp. 279–284. IEEE

  39. Bulacu M, Schomaker L (2007) Text-independent writer identification and verification using textural and allographic features. IEEE Trans Pattern Anal Mach Intell 29(4):701–717

    Article  Google Scholar 

  40. Bulacu M, Schomaker L, Brink A (2007) Text-independent writer identification and verification on offline Arabic handwriting. In: Document Analysis and Recognition (ICDAR- 07), Ninth International Conference on, p. 769–773. IEEE

  41. Bulacu M, Schomaker L, Vuurpijl L (2003) Writer identification using edge-based directional features. Writer 1:1

    Google Scholar 

  42. Cha SH, Srihari SN (2000) Assessing the authorship confidence of handwritten items. In: Proceedings, p. 42. IEEE

  43. Chahi A, Ruichek Y, Touahni R et al (2018) Block wise local binary count for offline text-independent writer identification. Expert Syst Appl 93:1–14

    Article  Google Scholar 

  44. Chanda S, Franke K, Pal U (2012) Text independent writer identification for Oriya script. In: Document Analysis Systems (DAS), 10th IAPR International Workshop on, pp. 369–373. IEEE

  45. Chanda S, Franke K, Pal U, Wakabayashi T (2010) Text independent writer identification for Bengali script. In: Pattern Recognition (ICPR), 20th International Conference on, p. 2005–2008. IEEE

  46. Chapran J (2006) Biometric writer identification: feature analysis and classification. Int J Pattern Recognit Artif Intell 20(04):483–503

    Article  Google Scholar 

  47. Chaudhry R, Pant SK (2004) Identification of authorship using lateral palm printa new concept. Forensic Sci Int 141(1):49–57

    Article  Google Scholar 

  48. Christlein V, Bernecker D, Honig F, Angelopoulou E (2014) Writer identification and verification using GMM supervectors. In: Applications of Computer Vision (WACV), IEEE Winter Conference on, p. 998–1005. IEEE

  49. Christlein V, Bernecker D, Hönig F, Maier A, Angelopoulou E (2017) Writer identification using GMM supervectors and exemplar-SVMs. Pattern Recogn 63:258–267

    Article  Google Scholar 

  50. Christlein V, Bernecker D, Maier A, Angelopoulou E (2015) Offline writer identification using convolutional neural network activation features. In: German Conference on Pattern Recognition, p. 540–552. Springer

  51. Christlein V, Gropp M, Fiel S, Maier A (2017) Unsupervised Feature Learning for Writer Identification and Writer Retrieval. arXiv preprint arXiv:1705.09369

  52. Christlein V, Maier A (2018) Encoding CNN activations for writer recognition. In: 13th IAPR International Workshop on Document Analysis Systems (DAS), pp. 169–174. IEEE

  53. Ciresan D, Meier U, Schmidhuber J (2012) Multi-column deep neural networks for image classification. arXiv preprint arXiv:1202.2745

  54. Djeddi C, Al-Maadeed S, Gattal A, Siddiqi I, Ennaji A, El Abed H (2016) ICFHR 2016 competition on multi-script writer demographics classification using “QUWI” database. In: Frontiers in Handwriting Recognition (ICFHR), 15th International Conference on, p. 602–606. IEEE

  55. Djeddi C, Al-Maadeed S, Gattal A, Siddiqi I, Souici-Meslati L, El Abed H (2015) Icdar2015 competition on multi-script writer identification and gender classification using QUWI database. In: Document Analysis and Recognition (ICDAR), 2015 13th International Conference on, p. 1191–1195. IEEE

  56. Durou A, Aref I, Al-Maadeed S, Bouridane A, Benkhelifa E (2017) Writer identification approach based on bag of words with obi features. Information Processing & Management

  57. Duvoisin RC, Sage J (2001) Parkinson’s disease: A guide for patient and family. Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, Philadelphia

    Google Scholar 

  58. Eaton HD (1938) Handwriting a neurological study. California and Western Medicine 61

  59. El Abed H, Margner V (2007) The IFN/ENIT-database-a tool to develop Arabic handwriting recognition systems. In: Signal Processing and its Applications (ISSPA 2007), 9th International Symposium on, p. 14. IEEE

  60. El Abed H, Märgner V (2011) ICDAR 2009-Arabic handwriting recognition competition. International Journal on Document Analysis and Recognition (IJDAR) 313

  61. El-Sherif EA, Abdelazeem S (2007) A two-stage system for Arabic handwritten digit recognition tested on a new large database. Artificial Intelligence and Pattern Recognition 237–242

  62. Fairhurst M, Chapran J (2006) Biometric writer identification based on the interdependency between static and dynamic features of handwriting. In: Proceedings of the 10th International Workshop on Frontiers in Handwriting Recognition, pp. 505–510

  63. Fecker D, Asit A, Märgner V, El-Sana J, Fingscheidt T (2014) Writer identification for historical arabic documents. In: Pattern Recognition (ICPR), 2014 22nd International Conference on, pp. 3050–3055. IEEE

  64. Fiel S, Sablatnig R (2010) Writer retrieval and writer identification using local features. In: Document Analysis Systems (DAS), 10th IAPR International Workshop on, pp. 145–149. IEEE

  65. Fiel S, Sablatnig R (2013) Writer identification and writer retrieval using the fisher vector on visual vocabularies. In: Document Analysis and Recognition (ICDAR), 12th International Conference on, p. 545–549. IEEE

  66. Fiel, S., Sablatnig, R. (2015) Writer identification and retrieval using a convolutional neural network. In: International Conference on Computer Analysis of Images and Patterns, p. 26–37. Springer

  67. Fornes A, Dutta A, Gordo A, Lladós J (2012) CVC-MUSCIMA: A database of handwritten music score images for writer identification and staff removal. International Journal on Document Analysis and Recognition manuscript p. 243–251

  68. Fornes A, Llados J, Sanchez G, Bunke H (2012) Writer identification in old handwritten music scores. In: Pattern Recognition and Signal Processing in Archaeometry: Mathematical and Computational Solutions for Archaeology, pp. 27–63. IGI Global

  69. Garg NK, Kumar M, et al (2018) Writer identification system for handwritten Gurmukhi characters: Study of different feature-classifier combinations. In: Proceedings of International Conference on Computational Intelligence and Data Engineering, pp. 125–131. Springer

  70. Gargouri M, Kanoun S, Ogier JM (2013) Text-independent writer identification on online Arabic handwriting. In: Document Analysis and Recognition (ICDAR), 12th International Conference on, pp. 428–432. IEEE

  71. Garz A, Würsch M, Fischer A, Ingold R (2016) Simple and fast geometrical descriptors for writer identification. Electronic Imaging 2016(17):1–12

    Article  Google Scholar 

  72. Geng Y, Liang RZ, Li W, Wang J, Liang G, Xu C, Wang JY (2016) Learning convolutional neural network to maximize pos@ top performance measure. arXiv preprint arXiv:1609.08417

  73. Geng Y, Zhang G, Li W, Gu Y, Liang RZ, Liang G, Wang J, Wu Y, Patil N, Wang JY (2017) A novel image tag completion method based on convolutional neural transformation. In: International Conference on Artificial Neural Networks, pp. 539–77. Springer

  74. Ghiasi G, Safabakhsh R (2013) Offline text-independent writer identification using codebook and efficient code extraction methods. Image Vis Comput 31:379–391

    Article  Google Scholar 

  75. Gibbons M, Yoon S, Cha SH, Tappert C (2005) Evaluation of biometric identification in open systems. In: International Conference on Audio and Video Based Biometric Person Authentication, p. 823–831. Springer

  76. Grosicki E, Carre M, Brodin JM, Geoffrois E (2008) Rimes evaluation campaign for handwritten mail processing. In: 11th International Conference on Frontiers in Handwriting Recognition, p. 16. Concordia University

  77. Hangai S, Yamanaka S, Hanamoto T (2000) Online signature verification based on altitude and direction of pen movement. In: Multimedia and Expo, 2000. ICME 2000. 2000 IEEE International Conference on, vol. 1, pp. 489–492. IEEE

  78. Hannad Y, Siddiqi I, El Kettani MEY (2015) Arabic writer identification using local binary patterns (LBP) of handwritten fragments. In: Iberian Conference on Pattern Recognition and Image Analysis, pp. 237–244. Springer

  79. Hannad Y, Siddiqi I, El Kettani MEY (2016) Writer identification using texture descriptors of handwritten fragments. Expert Systems with Applications 1422

  80. Hannad Y, Siddiqi I, El Kettani MEY (2016) Writer identification using texture descriptors of handwritten fragments. Expert Syst Appl 47:14–22

    Article  Google Scholar 

  81. Hassaïıne A, Al-Maadeed S, Bouridane A (2012) A set of geometrical features for writer identification. In: International Conference on Neural Information Processing, p. 584–591. Springer

  82. Hassaïne A, Al Maadeed S, Aljaam J, Jaoua A (2013) ICDAR 2013 competition on gender prediction from handwriting. In: Document Analysis and Recognition (ICDAR), 12th International Conference on, pp. 1417–1421. IEEE

  83. He Z, Fang B, Du J, Tang YY, You X (2005) A novel method for offline handwriting- based writer identification. In: Document Analysis and Recognition, 2005. Proceedings. Eighth International Conference on, pp. 242–246. IEEE

  84. He S, Schomaker L (2017) Writer identification using curvature-free features. Pattern Recogn 63:451–464

    Article  Google Scholar 

  85. He Z, Tang Y (2004) Chinese handwriting-based writer identification by texture analysis. In: Machine Learning and Cybernetics, Proceedings of 2004 International Conference on, vol. 6, pp. 3488–3491. IEEE

  86. He Z, Tang YY, You X (2005) A contourlet-based method for writer identification. In: Systems, Man and Cybernetics, 2005 IEEE International Conference on, vol. 1, pp. 364–368. IEEE

  87. He S, Wiering M, Schomaker L (2015) Junction detection in handwritten documents and its application to writer identification. Pattern Recognition p. 40364048

  88. He Z, You X, Tang YY (2008) Writer identification of Chinese handwriting documents using hidden Markov tree model. Pattern Recogn 41(4):1295–1307

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  89. He Z, You X, Zhou L, Cheung Y, Du J (2010) Writer identification using fractal dimension of wavelet subbands in Gabor domain. Integrated Computer-Aided Engineering 17(2):157–165

    Article  Google Scholar 

  90. Helli B, Moghadam ME (2008) Persian writer identification using extended Gabor filter. In: International Conference Image Analysis and Recognition, p. 579–586. Springer

  91. Helli B, Moghaddam ME (2008) A text-independent Persian writer identification system using LCS based classifier. In: Signal Processing and Information Technology, ISSPIT-08. IEEE International Symposium on, p. 203206. IEEE

  92. Helli B, Moghaddam ME (2009) A writer identification method based on XGabor and LCS. IEICE Electronics Express 6(10):623–629

    Article  Google Scholar 

  93. Hertel C, Bunke H (2003) A set of novel features for writer identification. In: International Conference on Audio and Video Based Biometric Person Authentication, pp. 679–687. Springer

  94. Hu Y, Yang W, Chen Y (2014) Bag of features approach for offline text-independent Chinese writer identification. In: Image Processing (ICIP), IEEE International Conference on, p. 26092613. IEEE

  95. Idicula SM (2011) A survey on writer identification schemes. Writer 15

  96. Imdad A, Bres S, Eglin V, Rivero-Moreno C, Emptoz H (2007) Writer identification using steered hermite features and SVM. In: Document Analysis and Recognition, 2007. ICDAR 2007. Ninth International Conference on, vol. 2, pp. 839–843. IEEE

  97. Jain R, Doermann D (2011) Offline writer identification using k-adjacent segments. In: Document Analysis and Recognition (ICDAR), International Conference on, p. 769–773. IEEE

  98. Jin W, Wang Y, Tan T (2005) Text-independent writer identification based on fusion of dynamic and static features. In: Advances in Biometric Person Authentication, pp. 197–204. Springer

  99. Kamal P, Rahman F, Mustafiz S (2014) A robust authentication system handwritten documents using local features for writer identification. Journal of Computing Science and Engineering 8(1):11–16

    Article  Google Scholar 

  100. Kameya H, Mori S, Oka R (2003) Figure-based writer verification by matching between an arbitrary part of registered sequence and an input sequence extracted from online handwritten figures. In: Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference on Document Analysis and Recognition Volume 2, p. 985. IEEE Computer Society

  101. Khalid S, Naqvi U, Siddiqi I (2015) Framework for human identification through offline handwritten documents. In: Computer, Communications, and Control Technology (I4CT), 2015 International Conference on, p. 54–58. IEEE

  102. Khalifa E, Al-Maadeed S, Tahir MA, Bouridane A, Jamshed A (2015) Offline writer identification using an ensemble of grapheme codebook features. Pattern Recogn Lett 59:18–25

    Article  Google Scholar 

  103. Khan FA, Tahir MA, Khelifi F, Bouridane A, Almotaeryi R (2017) Robust offline text independent writer identification using bagged discrete cosine transform features. Expert Syst Appl 71:404–415

    Article  Google Scholar 

  104. Kharma N, Ahmed M, Ward R (1999) A new comprehensive database of handwritten Arabic words, numbers, and signatures used for OCR testing. In: Electrical and Computer Engineering, IEEE Canadian Conference on, vol. 2, p. 766–768. IEEE

  105. Kleber F, Fiel S, Diem M, Sablatnig R (2013) CVL-database: An offline database for writer retrieval, writer identification and word spotting. In: Document Analysis and Recognition (ICDAR), 2013 12th International Conference on, p. 560–564. IEEE

  106. Kozinets B, Lantsman R, Sokolov B, Yakubovich V (1967) Identification and differentiation of handwritings with the help of electronic computers (opozanie i differentsyatsiya pocherkov pri pomoshchi elektronnovychislitelnykh mashin). Tech. rep., Foreign Technology Div Wright-Patterson AFB Ohio

  107. Kumar R, Chanda B, Sharma J (2014) A novel sparse model based forensic writer identification. Pattern Recogn Lett 35:105–112

    Article  Google Scholar 

  108. Kumar M, Jindal M, Sharma R (2014) A novel hierarchical technique for offline handwritten Gurmukhi character recognition. National Academy Science Letters 37(6):567–572

    Article  Google Scholar 

  109. Kumar R, Kaur M (2017) A character based handwritten identification using neural network and SVM. International Journal of Scientific Research in Science, Engineering and Technology (IJSRSET)

  110. Leedham G, Chachra S (2003) Writer identification using innovative binarised features of handwritten numerals. In: Document Analysis and Recognition, 2003. Proceedings. Seventh International Conference on, pp. 413–416. IEEE

  111. Liu L, Cheng L, Liu Y, Jia Y, Rosenblum DS (2016) Recognizing complex activities by a probabilistic interval-based model. AAAI 30:1266–1272

    Google Scholar 

  112. Liu Y, Nie L, Han L, Zhang L, Rosenblum DS (2015) Action2activity: Recognizing complex activities from sensor data. IJCAI 2015:1617–1623

    Google Scholar 

  113. Liu Y, Nie L, Liu L, Rosenblum DS (2016) From action to activity: sensor-based activity recognition. Neurocomputing 181:108–115

    Article  Google Scholar 

  114. Lowe DG (2004) Distinctive image features from scale-invariant keypoints. Int J Comput Vis 60(2):91–110

    Article  Google Scholar 

  115. Lu Y, Wei Y, Liu L, Zhong J, Sun L, Liu Y (2017) Towards unsupervised physical activity recognition using smartphone accelerometers. Multimedia Tools and Applications 76(8):10,701–10,719

    Article  Google Scholar 

  116. Mahmoud SA, Ahmad I, Al-Khatib WG, Alshayeb M, Parvez MT, Maargner V, Fink GA (2014) Khatt: An open arabic offline handwritten text database. Pattern Recogn 47(3):1096–1112

    Article  Google Scholar 

  117. Margner V, El Abed H (2007) ICDAR 2007 - Arabic handwriting recognition competition. In: Document Analysis and Recognition (ICDAR), 9th International Conference on, p. 1274–1278

  118. Margner V, El Abed H (2007) ICFHR 2010 - Arabic handwriting recognition competition. In: Frontiers in Handwriting Recognition (ICFHR), 12th International Conference on, p. 1274–1278

  119. Margner V, El Abed H (2011) ICDAR 2011-Arabic handwriting recognition competition. In: Document Analysis and Recognition (ICDAR), International Conference on, p. 1444–1448. IEEE

  120. Margner V, Pechwitz M, El Abed H (2005) ICDAR 2005 Arabic handwriting recognition competition. In: Document Analysis and Recognition (ICDAR), International Conference on, p. 7074

  121. Marti UV, Bunke H (1999) A full english sentence database for off-line handwriting recognition. In: Document Analysis and Recognition, 1999. ICDAR’99. Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on, p. 705–708. IEEE

  122. Marti UV, Messerli R, Bunke H (2001) Writer identification using text line based features. In: Document Analysis and Recognition, Proceedings. Sixth International Conference on, pp. 101–105. IEEE

  123. Miller JJ, Patterson RB, Gantz DT, Saunders CP, Walch MA, Buscaglia J (2017) A set of handwriting features for use in automated writer identification. J Forensic Sci 62(3):722–734

    Article  Google Scholar 

  124. MNISTWebsite (2018) The MNIST Database of Handwritten Digits. http://yann.lecun.com/exdb/mnist/

  125. Moghaddam ME, et al (2009) A persian writer identification method based on gradient features and neural networks. In: Image and Signal Processing, CISP’09. 2nd International Congress on, p. 14. IEEE

  126. Moghaddam ME, et al (2009) Text-independent Persian writer identification using fuzzy clustering approach. In: Information Management and Engineering, 2009. ICIME’09. International Conference on, pp. 728–731. IEEE

  127. Nakamura Y, Kidode M (2005) Individuality analysis of online kanji handwriting. In: Document Analysis and Recognition, 2005. Proceedings. Eighth International Conference on, pp. 620–624. IEEE

  128. Namboodiri A, Gupta S (2006) Text independent writer identification from online handwriting. In: Tenth International Workshop on Frontiers in Handwriting Recognition. Suvisoft

  129. Nasuno R, Arai S (2017) Writer identification for offline japanese handwritten character using convolutional neural network. In: Proceedings of the 5th IIAE(Institute of Industrial Applications Engineers) International Conference on Intelligent Systems and Image Processing, pp. 94–97

  130. Nejad F, Rahmati M (2007) A new method for writer identification and verification based on Farsi/Arabic handwritten texts. In: Document Analysis and Recognition, Ninth International Conference on, vol. 2, pp. 829–833. IEEE

  131. Newell AJ, Griffin LD (2011) Natural image character recognition using oriented basic image features. In: Digital Image Computing Techniques and Applications (DICTA), 2011 International Conference on, pp. 191–196. IEEE

  132. Newell AJ, Griffin LD (2014) Writer identification using oriented basic image features and the delta encoding. Pattern Recogn 47(6):2255–2265

    Article  Google Scholar 

  133. Pandey P, Seeja K (2018) Forensic writer identification with projection profile representation of graphemes. In: Proceedings of First International Conference on Smart System, Innovations and Computing, pp. 129–136. Springer

  134. Pechwitz M, Maddouri SS, Mäargner V, Ellouze N, Amiri H, et al (2002) IFN/ENIT-database of handwritten Arabic words. In: Proc. of CIFED, p. 127136. Citeseer

  135. Pervouchine V, Leedham G (2007) Extraction and analysis of forensic document examiner features used for writer identification. Pattern Recogn 40(3):1004–1013

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  136. Plamondon R, Lorette G (1989) Automatic signature verification and writer identification-the state of the art. Pattern Recogn 22(2):107–131

    Article  Google Scholar 

  137. Plamondon R, Srihari SN (2000) Online and offline handwriting recognition: a comprehensive survey. CIEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence 63–84

  138. Rafiee A, Motavalli H (2007) Offline writer recognition for farsi text. In: Artificial Intelligence Special Session, 2007. MICAI 2007. Sixth Mexican International Conference on, pp. 193–197. IEEE

  139. Ren S, He K, Girshick R, Sun J (2017) Faster r-cnn: towards real-time object detection with region proposal networks. IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis & Machine Intelligence 39(6):1137–1149

    Article  Google Scholar 

  140. Russakovsky O, Deng J, Su H, Krause J, Satheesh S, Ma S, Huang Z, Karpathy A, Khosla A, Bernstein M et al (2015) Imagenet large scale visual recognition challenge. Int J Comput Vis 115(3):211–252

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  141. Said H, Peake G, Tan T, Baker KD (1998) Writer identification from non-uniformly skewed handwriting images. BMVC 110

  142. Said HE, Tan TN, Baker KD (2000) Personal identification based on handwriting. Pattern Recognition 149–160

  143. Sainath TN, Mohamed AR, Kingsbury B, Ramabhadran B (2013) Deep convolutional neural networks for LVCSR. In: Acoustics, speech and signal processing (ICASSP), IEEE international conference on, pp. 8614–8618. IEEE

  144. Sas J (2006) Handwriting recognition accuracy improvement by author identification. In: International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Soft Computing, pp. 682–691. Springer

  145. Schlapbach A, Bunke H (2004) Offline handwriting identification using hmm based recognizers. In: Pattern Recognition (ICPR-04), Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on, p. 654–658. IEEE

  146. Schlapbach A, Bunke H (2004) Using hmm based recognizers for writer identification and verification. In: Frontiers in Handwriting Recognition (IWFHR-9), Ninth International Workshop on, p. 167–172. IEEE

  147. Schlapbach A, Bunke H (2005) Writer identification using an hmm-based handwriting recognition system: to normalize the input or not. In: Proc. 12th Conf. of the Int. Graphonomics Society, pp. 138–142

  148. Schlapbach A, Bunke H (2006) Offline writer identification using Gaussian mixture models. In: Pattern Recognition (ICPR-06), 18th International Conference on, vol. 3, pp. 992–995. IEEE

  149. Schlapbach A, Bunke H (2007) A writer identification and verification system using hmm based recognizers. Pattern Anal Applic 10(1):33–43

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  150. Schlapbach A, Kilchherr V, Bunke H (2005) Improving writer identification by means of feature selection and extraction. In: Document Analysis and Recognition, Proceedings. Eighth International Conference on, p. 131–135. IEEE

  151. Schlapbach A, Liwicki M, Bunke H (2008) A writer identification system for online whiteboard data. Pattern Recogn 41(7):2381–2397

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  152. Schomaker L (2007) Advances in Writer Identification and Verification. In: Int. Conf. on Document Analysis and Recognition, p. 1268–1273

  153. Schomaker L, Bulacu M (2004) Automatic writer identification using connected-component contours and edge-based features of uppercase western script. IEEE Trans Pattern Anal Mach Intell 26(6):787–798

    Article  Google Scholar 

  154. Schomaker L, Vuurpijl L (2000) Forensic writer identification: A benchmark data set and a comparison of two systems. [Internal Report for the Netherlands Forensic Institute]

  155. Seropian A, Grimaldi M, Vincent N (2003) Writer identification based on the fractal construction of a reference base. ICDAR 1163–1167

  156. Shahabi F, Rahmati M (2009) A new method for writer identification of handwritten farsi documents. In: 10th International Conference on Document Analysis and Recognition, p. 426430. IEEE

  157. Sharma MK, Dhaka VP (2015) Offline scripting-free author identification based on speeded-up robust features. International Journal on Document Analysis and Recognition (IJDAR) p. 303–316

  158. Sheikh A, Khotanlou H (2017) Writer identity recognition and confirmation using persian handwritten texts. International Journal of Advances in Applied Sciences 6(2):98–105

    Google Scholar 

  159. Shen C, Ruan XG, Mao TL (2002) Writer identification using Gabor wavelet. In: Intelligent Control and Automation, Proceedings of the 4th World Congress on, vol. 3, pp. 2061–2064. IEEE

  160. Siddiqi I (2009) Classification of handwritten documents: writer recognition. Ph.D. thesis, Universit Paris Descartes UFR Mathmatiques et Informatique

  161. Siddiqi I, Vincent N (2007) Writer identification in handwritten documents. In: Document analysis and recognition, ninth international conference on, p. 108–112. IEEE

  162. Siddiqi I, Vincent N (2008) Combining global and local features for writer identification. In: Proceedings of the 11. Int. Conference on Frontiers in Handwriting Recognition, Montreal

  163. Siddiqi I, Vincent N (2009) Combining contour based orientation and curvature features for writer recognition. In: International Conference on Computer Analysis of Images and Patterns, pp. 245–252. Springer

  164. Siddiqi I, Vincent N (2009) A set of chain code based features for writer recognition. In: Document Analysis and Recognition, ICDAR’09. 10th International Conference on, pp. 981–985. IEEE

  165. Siddiqi I, Vincent N (2010) Text independent writer recognition using redundant writing patterns with contour-based orientation and curvature features. Pattern Recogn 43(11):3853–3865

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  166. Srihari SN, Cha S, Arora H, Lee S (2002) Individuality of handwriting. J Forensic Sci 117

  167. Srihari SN, Tomai CI, Zhang B, Lee S (2003) Individuality of numerals. ICDAR 3:1096–1100

    Google Scholar 

  168. Steinherz T, Rivlin E, Intrator N (1999) A survey on offline cursive word recognition. International Journal on Document Analysis and Recognition 90–110

  169. Strassel S (2009) Linguistic resources for Arabic handwriting recognition. In: Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Arabic Language Resources and Tools, Cairo, Egypt

  170. Sun Y, Liang D, Wang X, Tang X (2015) Deepid3: Face recognition with very deep neural networks. arXiv preprint arXiv:1502.00873

  171. Sutanto PJ, Leedham G, Pervouchine V (2003) Study of the consistency of some discriminatory features used by document examiners in the analysis of handwritten letter’a’. In: Document Analysis and Recognition, 2003. Proceedings. Seventh International Conference on, pp. 1091–1095. IEEE

  172. Tan T (1992) Texture feature extraction via visual cortical channel modelling. In: Pattern Recognition, Image, Speech and Signal Analysis, Proceedings, 11th IAPR International Conference on, pp. 607–610. IEEE

  173. Tan T (1998) Rotation invariant texture features and their use in automatic script identification. IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence 751756

  174. Tan GX, Viard-Gaudin C, Kot AC (2009) Automatic writer identification framework for online handwritten documents using character prototypes. Pattern Recognition 33133323

  175. Tang Y, Bu W, Wu X (2014) Text-independent writer identification using improved structural features. In: Chinese Conference on Biometric Recognition, p. 404411. Springer

  176. Tang Y, Wu X, Bu W (2013) Offline text-independent writer identification using stroke fragment and contour based features. In: Biometrics (ICB), International Conference on, pp. 1–6. IEEE

  177. Thumwarin P, Matsuura T (2004) Online writer recognition for Thai based on velocity of barycenter of pen-point movement. In: Image Processing, 2004. ICIP’04. 2004 International Conference on, vol. 2, pp. 889–892. IEEE

  178. Timofte R, Van Gool LJ (2012) A training-free classification framework for textures, writers, and materials. BMVC 13:14

    Google Scholar 

  179. Tomai CI, Zhang B, Srihari SN (2004) Discriminatory power of handwritten words for writer recognition. In: Pattern Recognition, 2004. ICPR 2004. Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on, vol. 2, pp. 638–641. IEEE

  180. Ubul K, Hamdulla A, Aysa A, Raxidin A, Mahmut R (2008) Research on uyghur offline handwriting-based writer identification. In: Signal Processing, 2008. ICSP-08. 9th International Conference on, p. 1656–1659. IEEE

  181. Ünlü A, Brause R, Krakow K (2006) Handwriting analysis for diagnosis and prognosis of parkinson's disease. In: International Symposium on Biological and Medical Data Analysis, pp. 441–450. Springer

  182. Venugopal V, Sundaram S (2017) An online writer identification system using regression based feature normalization and codebook descriptors. Expert Syst Appl 72:196–206

    Article  Google Scholar 

  183. Wang X, Ding X, Liu H (2003) Writer identification using directional element features and linear transform. In: null, p. 9–42. IEEE

  184. Wang T, Wu DJ, Coates A, Ng AY (2012) End-to-end text recognition with convolutional neural networks. In: Pattern Recognition (ICPR), 21st International Conference on, pp. 3304–3308. IEEE

  185. Wen J, Fang B, Chen J, Tang Y, Chen H (2012) Fragmented edge structure coding for chinese writer identification. Neurocomputing 4551

  186. Woodard J, Lancaster M, Kundu A, Ruiz D, Ryan J (2010) Writer recognition of arabic text by generative local features. In: Biometrics: Theory Applications and Systems (BTAS), 2010 Fourth IEEE International Conference on, p. 1–7. IEEE

  187. Wu Y, Lu H, Zhang Z (2017) Text-independent online writer identification using hidden markov models. IEICE Trans Inf Syst 100(2):332–339

    Article  Google Scholar 

  188. Wu X, Tang Y, Bu W (2014) Offline text-independent writer identification based on scale invariant feature transform. IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security 526–536

  189. Xing L, Qiao Y (2016) DeepWriter: A Multi-Stream Deep CNN for Text independent Writer Identification. In: 2016 15th International Conference on Frontiers in Handwriting Recognition (ICFHR), pp. 584–589

  190. Xiong YJ, Wen Y, Wang, PS, Lu Y (2015) Text-independent writer identification using sift descriptor and contour-directional feature. In: Document Analysis and Recognition (ICDAR), 13th International Conference on, p. 91–95. IEEE

  191. Yakopcic C, Alom MZ, Taha TM (2016) Memristor crossbar deep network implementation based on a convolutional neural network. 2016 International Joint Conference on Neural Networks (IJCNN) pp. 963–9 @articleYakopcic2016MemristorCD, title=Memristor crossbar deep network implementation based on a Convolutional neural network, author=Chris Yakopcic and Md. Zahangir Alom and Tarek M. Taha, journal=2016 International Joint Conference on Neural Networks (IJCNN), year=2016, pages=963–970 70

  192. Yang W, Jin L, Liu M (2015) Chinese character-level writer identification using path signature feature, dropstroke and deep CNN. In: Document Analysis and Recognition (ICDAR), 2015 13th International Conference on, pp. 546–550. IEEE

  193. Yang W, Jin L, Liu M (2016) DeepWriterID: An End-to-end Online Text-independent Writer Identification System. IEEE Intell. Syst. 45–53

  194. Zhang J, He Z, Cheung YM, You X (2009) Writer identification using a hybrid method combining Gabor wavelet and mesh fractal dimension. In: International Conference on Intelligent Data Engineering and Automated Learning, pp. 535–542. Springer

  195. Zhang G, Liang G, Li W, Fang J, Wang J, Geng Y, Wang JY (2017) Learning convolutional ranking-score function by query preference regularization. In: International Conference on Intelligent Data Engineering and Automated Learning, pp. 1–8. Springer

  196. Zhang B, Srihari SN (2003) Analysis of handwriting individuality using word features. In: Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference on Document Analysis and Recognition Volume 2, p. 1142. IEEE Computer Society

  197. Zhang B, Srihari SN, Lee S (2003) Individuality of handwritten characters. In: Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference on Document Analysis and Recognition Volume 2, p. 1086. IEEE Computer Society

  198. Zhang XY, Xie GS, Liu CL, Bengio Y (2017) End-to-end online writer identification with recurrent neural network. IEEE Transactions on Human-Machine Systems 47(2):285–292

    Article  Google Scholar 

  199. Zhu Y, Tan T, Wang Y (2000) Biometric personal identification based on handwriting. In: Pattern Recognition, Proceedings. 15th International Conference on, vol. 2, pp. 797–800. IEEE

  200. Zhu Y, Tan T, Wang Y (2001) Font recognition based on global texture analysis. IEEE Transactions on pattern analysis and machine intelligence p. 1192–1200

  201. Zhu Y, Wang Y (2016) An offline text-independent writer identification system with sae feature extraction. In: Progress in Informatics and Computing (PIC), 2016 International Conference on, pp. 432–436. IEEE

  202. Zimmermann K, Varady M (1985) Handwriter identification from one-bit quantized pressure patterns. Pattern Recogn 18(1):63–72

    Article  Google Scholar 

  203. Zois EN, Anastassopoulos V (2000) Morphological waveform coding for writer identification. Pattern Recogn 33(3):38

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Government Girls Postgraduate College, no.1, Abbottabad, KPK, Pakistan

    Arshia Rehman & Saeeda Naz

  2. University of Technology Sydney, Sydney, Australia

    Muhammad Imran Razzak

Authors
  1. Arshia Rehman
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Saeeda Naz
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Muhammad Imran Razzak
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Saeeda Naz.

Additional information

Publisher’s Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Rehman, A., Naz, S. & Razzak, M.I. Writer identification using machine learning approaches: a comprehensive review. Multimed Tools Appl 78, 10889–10931 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-018-6577-1

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Revised:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-018-6577-1

Keywords

Search

Navigation