Segmenting handwritten signatures at their perceptually important points

A new algorithm for segmenting continuous handwritten signatures sampled by a digitizer is described. The segmentation points are found using a two-step procedure. The principal step is to construct a function that weights the perceptual importance of every signature point according to its specific neighboring points. The second step points out the various local maxima of this function that correspond to where the signature should be segmented. The method is well illustrated and tested on a number of signatures that require different kinds of segmentation decisions.>