Offline Arabic handwritten word recognition: A transfer learning approach

Offline Arabic handwritten word recognition is still a challenging task. Many deep learning approaches perform admirably on this task if the lexicon size is not too large and the number of training samples is sufficient for the training process. The transfer learning technique is commonly used to co...

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Main Authors: Mohamed Awni, Mahmoud I. Khalil, Hazem M. Abbas
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Springer 2022-11-01
Series:Journal of King Saud University: Computer and Information Sciences
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Online Access:http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1319157821003323
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author Mohamed Awni
Mahmoud I. Khalil
Hazem M. Abbas
author_facet Mohamed Awni
Mahmoud I. Khalil
Hazem M. Abbas
author_sort Mohamed Awni
collection DOAJ
description Offline Arabic handwritten word recognition is still a challenging task. Many deep learning approaches perform admirably on this task if the lexicon size is not too large and the number of training samples is sufficient for the training process. The transfer learning technique is commonly used to compensate for the lack of training samples, but there is a wide controversy about the effectiveness of applying it to cross-domain tasks. In this paper, we examine the performance of three deep convolution neural networks that have been randomly initialized for recognizing Arabic handwritten words. Then, we evaluate the performance of the ResNet18 model that has been pre-trained on the ImageNet dataset for the same task. Finally, we propose an approach based on sequentially transferring the mid-level word image representations through two consecutive phases using the ResNet18 model. We carried out four different sets of experiments using two popular offline Arabic handwritten word datasets: the AlexU-W and the IFN/ENIT (v2.0p1e) to figure out the most effective way of applying transfer learning. Our results demonstrate that using the ImageNet as a source dataset improves the recognition accuracy of the ten frequently misclassified words in the IFN/ENIT dataset by 14%, while our proposed approach gives a rise of 35.45%. In the whole dataset, we achieved recognition accuracy up to 96.11%, which is nearly a 2.5% enhancement compared with other state-of-the-art methods.
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spelling doaj-art-a6fae292c51243159cbfd4d65e4c59e02025-08-20T03:51:58ZengSpringerJournal of King Saud University: Computer and Information Sciences1319-15782022-11-0134109654966110.1016/j.jksuci.2021.11.018Offline Arabic handwritten word recognition: A transfer learning approachMohamed Awni0Mahmoud I. Khalil1Hazem M. Abbas2Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, Higher Technological Institute, 10th of Ramadan City, Egypt; Corresponding author.Computer and Systems Engineering Department, Faculty of Engineering, Ain Shams University, Cairo, EgyptComputer and Systems Engineering Department, Faculty of Engineering, Ain Shams University, Cairo, EgyptOffline Arabic handwritten word recognition is still a challenging task. Many deep learning approaches perform admirably on this task if the lexicon size is not too large and the number of training samples is sufficient for the training process. The transfer learning technique is commonly used to compensate for the lack of training samples, but there is a wide controversy about the effectiveness of applying it to cross-domain tasks. In this paper, we examine the performance of three deep convolution neural networks that have been randomly initialized for recognizing Arabic handwritten words. Then, we evaluate the performance of the ResNet18 model that has been pre-trained on the ImageNet dataset for the same task. Finally, we propose an approach based on sequentially transferring the mid-level word image representations through two consecutive phases using the ResNet18 model. We carried out four different sets of experiments using two popular offline Arabic handwritten word datasets: the AlexU-W and the IFN/ENIT (v2.0p1e) to figure out the most effective way of applying transfer learning. Our results demonstrate that using the ImageNet as a source dataset improves the recognition accuracy of the ten frequently misclassified words in the IFN/ENIT dataset by 14%, while our proposed approach gives a rise of 35.45%. In the whole dataset, we achieved recognition accuracy up to 96.11%, which is nearly a 2.5% enhancement compared with other state-of-the-art methods.http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1319157821003323Deep convolutional neural networksOffline Arabic handwritten wordsTransfer learningProgressive resizingResNet-18
spellingShingle Mohamed Awni
Mahmoud I. Khalil
Hazem M. Abbas
Offline Arabic handwritten word recognition: A transfer learning approach
Journal of King Saud University: Computer and Information Sciences
Deep convolutional neural networks
Offline Arabic handwritten words
Transfer learning
Progressive resizing
ResNet-18
title Offline Arabic handwritten word recognition: A transfer learning approach
title_full Offline Arabic handwritten word recognition: A transfer learning approach
title_fullStr Offline Arabic handwritten word recognition: A transfer learning approach
title_full_unstemmed Offline Arabic handwritten word recognition: A transfer learning approach
title_short Offline Arabic handwritten word recognition: A transfer learning approach
title_sort offline arabic handwritten word recognition a transfer learning approach
topic Deep convolutional neural networks
Offline Arabic handwritten words
Transfer learning
Progressive resizing
ResNet-18
url http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1319157821003323
work_keys_str_mv AT mohamedawni offlinearabichandwrittenwordrecognitionatransferlearningapproach
AT mahmoudikhalil offlinearabichandwrittenwordrecognitionatransferlearningapproach
AT hazemmabbas offlinearabichandwrittenwordrecognitionatransferlearningapproach