Word normalization for online handwritten word recognition

We introduce a new approach to normalizing words written with an electronic stylus that applies to all styles of handwriting (upper case, lower case, printed, cursive, or mixed). A geometrical model of the word spatial structure is fitted to the pen trajectory using the expectation-maximisation algorithm. The fitting process maximizes the likelihood of the trajectory given the model and a set a priors on its parameters. The method was evaluated and integrated to a recognition system that combines neural networks and hidden Markov models.