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UFR des Sciences, University of Rouen
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Figure 3. Adjustment of the within and between-
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Table 3. Evaluation of the first and second
order error on the IAM_DataBase.
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3. Verification from handwriting words
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Table 2. Summary of the various values of α, YHULILFDWLRQ WHVW EHFDXVH LQ WKLV VLWXDWLRQ D VXIILFHQW
1-β and Vc calculated on PSI_DataBase.
As we indicated previously, the IAM_DataBase was
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used for the evaluation of our writer verification system.

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The test consists in measuring the within-and between-

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writers similarities in order to validate the decision rule.

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The results obtained are summarized in table 3 below.

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Proceedings of the 9th Int’l Workshop on Frontiers in Handwriting Recognition (IWFHR-9 2004)
0-7695-2187-8/04 $20.00 © 2004 IEEE
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Figure 4. Some samples of our handwritten word

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In this communication we have investigated the writer
verification problems. It constitutes a complementary and
necessary approach for any identification approach,
because it offers the only mean of individual rejection

Proceedings of the 9th Int’l Workshop on Frontiers in Handwriting Recognition (IWFHR-9 2004)
0-7695-2187-8/04 $20.00 © 2004 IEEE
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(writer) when one writer is unknown by the system. We

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were interested in the writer verification from text blocs,

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independently of their textual contents, and in the writer

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verification from handwritten words, where we tried to

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avoid the use of characters location. In both cases, we

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built a discriminating criterion and a decision rule based

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on a hypothesis test. This allowed us to quantify the two

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kinds of errors (false acceptance and false rejection).

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The verification performances obtained from text blocs

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analysis was definitely better than those obtained from the

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handwritten word analysis, what seems completely

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natural. We showed that it is possible to authenticate the

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handwritings of two documents without needing to know

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beforehand its properties. The tests were carried out on a

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basis of 150 writers unknown by the system and have
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allows us to obtain 4% error of false acceptance. Results

obtained for the verification on handwritten words are
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about 15% of false acceptance what is completely
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honorable without using the characters knowledge in the

words.
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These results highlight the capacity to characterize the
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writings from the elementary patterns which compose

them and which can be extracted thanks to a segmentation
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algorithm. These characteristics allows to automate the
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writer verification task without introducing additional
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knowledge, generally used by the Forensic Document
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Examiner (knowledge on the words or the characters).
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more constraining verification tasks. We think naturally to :DYHIRUP &RGLQJ IRU :ULWHU ,GHQWLILFDWLRQ´ 3DWWHUQ
the detection of forgery. But in the current state, the 5HFRJQLWLRQYROQƒSS
approach makes it possible right now to supplement the 
results which we obtained for the writer identification task
[2], by providing a rejection method of unknown writers.
Finally this study highlights the capacity of the
handwriting to constitute an interesting biometric
characteristic for certain cases of use.

5. References

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Proceedings of the 9th Int’l Workshop on Frontiers in Handwriting Recognition (IWFHR-9 2004)
0-7695-2187-8/04 $20.00 © 2004 IEEE