International Journal of Computer Information Systems Vol. 3, No.

4, 2011

A Geometric Approach for Tifinagh Character Recognition Using Fuzzy NN & ANN
Omar Bencharef 1, Mohamed Fakir 1, Brahim Minaoui1, Belaid Bouikhalene 2 Sultan Moulay Slimane University,Faculty of Science and Technology, Beni Mellal -- Morocco
Bencharef98@gmail.com,fakfad@yahoo.fr,bra_mina@yahoo.fr

Sultan Moulay Slimane University, Polydiscilinary faculty, Beni Mellal Morocco

bbouikhalene@yahoo.fr Abstract In this paper we propose a geometric approach for character description based on the calculation of what we call Curvature descriptors. These descriptors showed remarkable reliability when it comes to scale change, noise presence or shape alterations. For classification, we have opted for a method based on the hybridization of Fuzzy-Neural Network and classic Neural Networks (ANN). We are using this approach to recognize printed Tifinagh characters. Index Terms Riemannian geometry, Curvature Scalar, Tifinagh Character, Fuzzy-Neural & ANN.

increase the recognition rate, the characters are segmented in two parts: main part and secondary part. For the classification process, we propose to use the classifier composed of the hybridization of neural networks and the fuzzy logic classifier. This paper is organized as follows: the second section provides an overview on the Tifinagh characters and the third section is dedicated to basic notions of Riemannian geometry and to the description of the proposed method. The fourth section emphasizes on the classification process and the last section is devoted to experimental results. 2. THE TIFINAGH CHARACTER According to researchers, the word Tifinagh is compound of two words: Tifi (that is discovering) and Nagh (that is ones self). After lengthy discussions whether to use Berber, Latin or Arabic script, the IRCAM of Morocco has opted for Tamazight Tifinagh script.(Fig.1)

1. INTRODUCTION The objective of optical character recognition (OCR) is the automatic reading of optically sensed document text materials to translate human readable characters to machinereadable codes [2]. Research in OCR is known for its various application potentials in banks, post-offices and defense organizations. Other applications involve reading aid for the blind, library automation, language processing and multi-media design [3, 8].For the first time OCR was realized as data processing approach, with particular applications to the business world. Currently, PC based systems are commercially available to read printed documents of single font with very high accuracy and documents of multiple fonts with reasonable accuracy. Most of the available systems work on Latin scripts, Chinese and Japanese scripts [3-7]. However the machine recognition of Tifinagh character text has not been fully explored. The difficulty involved in processing Tifinagh character is that there are many characters that can be obtained from others by rotation or scaling. Furthermore the existence of secondary characters in different positions creates other problem in recognition. In our previous article we proposed to use Riemannian geometry as a new approach for features extraction. By using the Riemannian metric we calculate what we called Riemannian descriptors. The proposed descriptors have shown a remarkable reliability when it comes to scale change, noise presence or shape alterations. The main inconvenient of this method was the number of the extracted descriptors, (only five).[1] In this paper, we propose to extend the input data by using The Curvature Scalar as a new extraction method .To

Fig. 1. The Tifinagh characters adopted by the IRCAM.

The IRCAM was also successful in convincing the International Organization of Standardization (ISO) to recognise Berber Tifinagh and thus in June 2004 Tifinagh was registered in its register of the languages of the world. This means that the coding of Tifinagh will enable it, from 2005, to be integrated into the software products of the major companies. The new Tifinagh system contains 55 letters, 22 of which were new additions. 3. FEATURES EXTRACTION USING RIEMANNIAN
GEOMETRY

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International Journal of Computer Information Systems Vol. 3, No. 4, 2011 Riemannian geometry was first put forward by Bernhard Riemann in the nineteenth century. It deals with a broad range of geometries with metric properties which vary from a point to another. We define the Riemannian geometry as the study of Riemannian manifolds: (smooth manifolds with a Riemannian metric).[9] To better understand this, we present some basic definitions: A manifold is a topological space that is locally Euclidean (i.e., around every point, there is a neighboring area that is topologically the same).[10][11] An inner product is a generalization of the dot product. In a vector space, it is a way to multiply vectors together, with the result of this multiplication being a scalar. The inner product of two vectors u & v are given by: <u, v>M =tu M v. The collection of all inner products of a manifold are called the Riemannian metric. 3.1. The Curvature Scalar To calculate the Curvature Scalar, we need firs to calculate the Riemannian Metric in each point (Pixel) of the surface and the Cristoffel Symbols. The Riemannian metric is a twice-covariant tensor field which is symmetric and positive-definite at each point. (Think field of dot products). Due to bilinearity, it is: (1) For surfaces: (2) (3) (4) (5) For surfaces, there are eight Christoffel symbols, with i, j, k = 1, 2: (6) 3.2. Pre-treatment Process
As you notice, the Scalar curvature is calculated on the basis of partial derivative in each point. For our case, simulating an image containing handwritten characters (often in black &white) with a manifold and calculating its metric does not provide the desired results (the partial derivative is null in every point, thus the metric is null as well).To solve this problem, we have enriched the contents of the image by superimposing it separately on two mesh matrix (figure 3). Meshing is usually used on 3D objects to enhance view or to link their skeletons (figure 2). To carry out this method we use the following program.[12]

Program N1 (Matlab) % we will create two empty matrix x & y that will receive uniformly and in ascending order values between 0 and 127. Fonction [x, y, z, ds, dt] = mail() smin = 127; smax = 0; ns = 64; ds = (smax-smin)/ns; % t in ascending order. (from top to bottom) tmin = 127.0; tmax = 0.0; nt = 64; dt = (tmax-tmin)/nt; % for meshing, we can use the Matlab function mishgrid() [s,t] = meshgrid(smin:ds:smax, tmin:dt:tmax); % Reading the image containning the character % Wedevide the values of those pixels by 2 i=double (imread('z8.bmp'))/2; %% We change parameters to get 3D coordinates x = s+i; y = t+i; z = s-s; surf(x,y,z); % projection des rsultats.

Here, the Einstein summation convention is used. (7) The 1,3 curvature tensor: (8) The 0,4 curvature tensor: (9) The 0,2 curvature tensor: Scalar curvature: Which in turn is: (12) (10) (11)
Figure 2: Projection of results obtained using Program N1 for two Tifinagh characters .

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International Journal of Computer Information Systems Vol. 3, No. 4, 2011 [22], GARIC [13],). In this article we are going to use the ANFIS. ANFIS uses a hybrid learning algorithm to identify the membership function parameters of single-output, Sugeno type fuzzy inference systems (FIS). A combination of leastsquared and back-propagation gradient descent methods are used for training FIS membership function parameters to model a given set of input/output data. The ANFIS program is available with the fuzzy Matlab toolbox .

3.3. Curvature descriptors In this paragraph, each character will be considered as a specific surface for which we are going to calculate the Scalar Curvature in each point. We are going to call Curvature descriptors (Cd) the significant vertical sum of the Scalar Curvature in each point: (10) Cdj= CGj
j 0 , n

TABLE.1 illustrates the obtained results for the Curvature descriptors used in this article for some Tifinagh character. TABLE I. CURVATURE DESCRIPTORS CALCULATED FOR DIFFERENT TIFINAGH CHARACTER.

0.0112 0.0023 5.8580 0.0014

0.0181 8.0321 0.0252 0.0000

0.0052 0.0222 8.7285 0.0038

0.0026 5.3365 0.0030 0.0074

0.0088 0.0109 0.0010 0.0260

0.0072 0.0085 0.0306 0.0149

0.0115 0.0236 0.0011 0.0146

0.0124 0.0017 0.0107 5.8354

Fig. 3. The ANFIS Architecture (From the Matlab Library)

5.8444 0.0150 5.2946 0.0417

0.0436 0.0410 0.0245 5.3199

0.0021 0.0008 5.8350 0.0381 0.0005 0.0014 0.0036 0.0072

5.8552 0.0107 0 0.0223

0.0334 0.0117 0.0057 0.0001 0 0 0 0.0002 0.0089 5.3336 0 0.0000

Sugeno Model A first-order Sugeno fuzzy model has rules as the following: Rule1: If x is A1 and y is B1, then f1 = p1x + q1y + r1 Rule2: If x is A2 and y is B2, then f2 = p2x + q2y + r2 Layer 1 I Ol,i is the output of the ith node of the layer l. Every node i in this layer is an adaptive node with a node function O1,i = Ai(x) for i = 1, 2, or O1,i = Bi2(x) for i = 3, 4 x (or y) is the input node i and Ai (or Bi2) is a linguistic label associated with this node Therefore O1,i is the membership grade of a fuzzy set (A1,A2,B1,B2). (11) Typical membership function: ai, bi, ci is the parameter set. Parameters are referred to as premise parameters. Layer 2 Every node in this layer is a fixed node labeled Prod. The output is the product of all the incoming signals. O2,i = wi = Ai(x) Bi(y), i = 1, 2 Each node represents the fire strength of the rule Any other T-norm operator that perform the AND operator can be used Layer 3 Every node in this layer is a fixed node labeled Norm. The ith node calculates the ratio of the ithrulets firing strenght to the sum of all rulets firing strengths.

4. CLASSIFICATION 4.1. Adaptive Neuro-Fuzzy training of Sugeno-type FIS. A neuro-fuzzy network can be defined as a fuzzy system trained with some algorithm derived from the neural network theory. The integration of neural networks and fuzzy systems aims at the generation of a more robust, efficient and easily interpretable system where the advantages of each model are kept and their possible disadvantages are removed. Some neural network models such as the MLP. [13,14] have been successfully applied to the training of neuro-fuzzy networks. Modern neuro-fuzzy systems are usually represented as special multilayer feed forward neural networks (see for example models like ANFIS [19], FuNe [18], Fuzzy RuleNet

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International Journal of Computer Information Systems Vol. 3, No. 4, 2011 (12) Outputs are called normalized firing strengths. Layer 4 Every node i in this layer is an adaptive node with a node function: O4,1 = wifi = wi(px + qiy + ri) wi is the normalized firing strenght from layer 3. {pi, qi, ri} is the parameter set of this node. These are referred to as consequent parameters. Layer 5 The single node in this layer is a fixed node labeled sum, which computes the overall output as the summation of all incoming signals: overall output = O5,1 = (13) complex nonlinear relationships between dependent and independent variables, and to detect all possible interactions between predictor variables, the permit the character recognition part, [17][18]

Fig.4. Characters defined directly by geodesic descriptors

Fig. 5. Composed Characters

Fig. 6.Circular Characters

4.2. Artificial Neural Network The Artificial Neural Network (ANN) was inspired by investigations into the structure of the human brain that consists of interconnected neurons. An ANN is made up of interconnecting artificial neurons within input, hidden and output layers. It has two modes of operation: training mode and operation/testing mode. In the training mode, neurons are trained using a particular input pattern to produce the desired output pattern. In the operation/testing mode, when a taught input pattern is detected at the input, the ANN will produce its associated output. A Back propagation or feed-forward Back propagation ANN consists of two processing parts within its neurons: forward and backward. When an input pattern is fed to the ANN during its training process, the ANN will try to learn and compare its predicted output value with the desired output value. The errors between the predicted and actual values are then ``back propagated'' through the network, and a gradient descent algorithm used to adjust the weights in the hidden and output layer nodes. The result is a network that produces the mapping between the input values and the output values via the neurons. [10]

In practice, we used a multilayer neural network (two layers) with supervised learning, driven by the back propagation of the gradient with Curvature descriptors as input. For the Neuro-Fuzzy classifier we use the ANFIS algorithm, and the input data is composed of 3 parameters: The number of components. The distance between the centers of the two components if they exist. Existence of circular geometry.
Fuzzy-NN

ANN

ANN

ANN

Fig.7 . Integrated classification process used to recognize Tifinagh characters

5. CLASSIFICATION To eliminate all confusion that can be made by the secondary part in composed characters (Fig.5). To deal with these particular cases, we have chosen to operate with a hybrid classifier made of Neuro-Fuzzy classifier and the classic neural networks. On the one hand, Neuro-Fuzzy has a supple discriminatory characteristic which allowed us to separate characters in three classes (Figure 7). On the other hand, neural networks with their ability to implicitly detect

6. RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS We tested our approach of Tifinagh character recognition on the database Y. Ouguengay[22]. This database includes 2175 characters printed in different sizes and writing styles. (Fig.8) IV. RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS

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International Journal of Computer Information Systems Vol. 3, No. 4, 2011

Networks, International Journal of Advances in Science and Technology, Vol. 2, No.6, 2011,pp 1-9. J. Hu and H. Yan, Structural Primitive Extraction and Coding for Handwritten Numeral Recognition, Pattern Recognition, Vol. 31, No. 5, 1998, pp. 493-509. J. Mantas, An Overview of Character Recognition Methodologies, Pattern Recognition 19, 1986, pp.425-430. R. M. Bozinovic and S. N. Shihari, Off Line Cursive Script Word Recognition, IEEE Trans. Pattern Anal. Mach. Intell. PAMI 11, 1989, pp. 68-83. R. Casey and G. Nagy, Automatic ReadingMachine, IEE Trans. Comput. 17, 1968, pp. 492-503 K. Y. Wang, R. C. Casey and F. M. Wahl,Document Analysis System, IBM J.Res.Dev. 26,1982, pp. 647-656. S. Mori, C. Y. Suen and K. Yamamoto, HistoricalReview of OCR Research and Development, Proc.IEEE80, 1992, pp. 1029-1058. S. Kahan, T. Pavlidis and H. S. Baird, On theRecognition of Printed Character of Any Font andSize, IEEE Trans.Pattern Analysis and MachineIntellegence, PAMI.9, 1987, pp. 274-288. E.KALSEN &al(2004), Analaysis of planar shapse using geodesic paths on shape spaces,IEEETRANSACTIONS ON PATTERN ANALYSIS AND MATCHING INTELIGENCE , VOL 26, NO 3. S. Gallot, D. Hulin, et J. Lafontaine. Riemannian Geometry. Universitext. Springer Verlag, New York, 1990. [11] A. Fuster, L. Astola and L. Florack, A Riemannian Scalar Measure for Diffusion Tensor Images, Lecture notes in Computer Science, 5702 (2009), pp. 419426.. [12] X. Pennec, P. Fillard and N. Ayache, A Riemannian Framework for Tensor Computing, Int. J. Computer Vision, 66(1) (2006), pp. 4166. J. C. Bezdek, E. C.-K. Tsao, and N. R. Pal, Fuzzy Kohonen clustering networks, in: Proc. IEEE Int. Conf. on Fuzzy Systems (San Diego, 1992) 1035--1043. J. J. Buckley and Y. Hayashi, Fuzzy neural networks: A survey, Fuzzy Sets and Systems 66 (1994) 1-13. J. J. Buckley and Y. Hayashi, Neural networks for fuzzy systems, Fuzzy Sets and Systems 71 (1995) 265-276. S. K. Halgamuge and M. Glesner, Neural networks in designing fuzzy systems for real world applications, Fuzzy Sets and Systems 65 (1994) 1--12. J.-S.R. Jang, ANFIS: Adaptive-Network-Based Fuzzy Inference Systems, IEEE Trans. Systems, Man &Cybernetics 23 (1993) 665-685 D. Nauck, F. Klawonn, and R. Kruse, Foundations of Neuro--Fuzzy Systems, (Wiley, Chichester, 1996, to be published). D. Nauck and R. Kruse, Designing neuro--fuzzy systems through backpropagation, in: W. Pedrycz, Ed., FuzzyModelling: Paradigms and Practice, (Kluwer, Boston, 1996) 203-228. N. Tschichold-Grman, RuleNet -- A New Knowledge--Based Artificial Neural Network Model with Application Examples in Robotics, PhD thesis (ETH Zrich, 1996). P. Vuorimaa, Fuzzy self--organizing map, Fuzzy Sets and Systems, 66 (1994) 223--231. Y.A.Ouguengay, M.Taalabi,(2009) "Elaboration dun rseau de neurones artificiels pour la reconnaissance optique de la graphie amazighe : Phase dapprentissage", 5e Confrence internationale sur les "Systmes Intelligents : Thories et Applications", Paris : Europia, cop. (impr. au Maroc), ISBN 978-2-909285-55-3 .

[2]

[3] [4]

[5] [6] Fig.8 . Tifinagh character from the Y.Ouguengay database printed in different sizes and writing styles [7] [8]

Each character will be determined using Curvature descriptors identification by Fuzzy-Neural classifier and classic neural networks (using decision trees). We tested our approach on different characters of the database. Table.2 gives an idea about recognition ratios of the database objects.
Table.2 Recognition rate depending on the number of characters to identify

[9]

[10] [11]

Metric descriptors[1] Number of characters to identify 15 23 29 33 SVM 97% 84% 81% 71%

Scalar Curvature descriptors Neural ANN & Networks Fuzzy NN (ANN)* 98% 99% 93% 95,5% 84% 93% 81% 91%

[12]

[13]

[14] [15] [16]

*: Results obtained for centered images

[17]

Notice that despite the size of the database which is of 1 samples of each character, the suggested descriptors have proven efficient results using neural networks. The integration of Fuzzy-Neural classifier has brought the recognition ratios remarkably higher. We can observe that the use of Curvature descriptors give better results than the Metric descriptors previously proposed. [1] In this study, we have used the Curvature as a new approach for shape descriptors extraction and we have opted for a hybridization of neural networks and Neuro-Fuzzy classifier for classification. The robustness of our recognition system was tested and illustrated on a Tifinagh database supplemented by images with different alterations such as the luminance variation, the presence of white Gaussian noise with a variance of 10%. The recognition system proved efficient as we obtained a recognition rate of 93% for a training set composed of 20 samples of each Tifinagh character. REFERENCES
[1] M.Fakir,O, Bencharef, B.Bouikhalen,B.Minaoui , Tifinagh Character Recognition Using Riemannian Metric, SVM & Neural

[18] [19]

[20]

[21] [22]

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Authors Profile
Omar BENCHAREF obtained hes
DESS degree in 2007 from the University of Cadi Ayyad Marrakech Morocco. Currently he is a PhD student at the Center of Doctoral Studies in the Faculty of Science and technology of Beni Mellal, Morocco His research concerns image processing & Recognition. Dr. Belaid BOUIKHALENE obtained a Ph.D. degree in Mathematics in 2001 and a degree of Master in Computer science in 2005 from the University of Ibn Tofel Kenitra, Morocco. He is currently a professor at University Sultan Moulay Slimane, Morocco, His research focuses on mathematics and applications, decision information systems, e-learnig, pattern recognition and artificial intelligence. Dr. Brahim MINAOUI obtained a Ph.D. degree in physics. He is currently a professor at the Faculty of Science and Technology, University Sultan Moulay Slimane, Morocco, His research focuses on mathematics and applications, decision information systems, recognition, Artificial intelligence & physics.

Dr Mohamed FAKIR obtained a degree in Master of Electrical Engineering from Nagaoka University of Technology in 1991 and a Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from the University of Cadi Ayyad, Morocco. He was a team member in Hitachi Ltd., Japan between 1991 and 1994. He is currently a professor at the Faculty of Science and Technology, University Sultan Moulay Slimane, Morocco. His research concerns the recognition and artificial intelligence.

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