An investigation of letter identification and scribe predictability in medieval manuscripts
medieval manuscripts, diagonal feature extraction, Tremulous Hand of Worcester, calligraphy, letter classification, scribe identification.
Though handwriting might seem archaic today in comparison with typed communication, it is a long-established human activity that has survived into the 21st century. Accordingly, research interest into handwritten documents, both historical and modern, is significant. The way we write has changed significantly over the past centuries. For example, the texts of the Middle Ages were often written and copied by anonymous scribes. The writing of each scribe, known as his or her 'scribal hand' is unique, and can be differentiated using a variety of consciously and unconsciously produced features. Distinguishing between these different scribal hands is a central focus of the humanities research field known as 'palaeography'. This process may be supported and/or enhanced using digital techniques, and thus digital writer identification from historical handwritten documents has also flourished. The automation of the process of recognising individual characters within each scribal hand has also posed an interesting challenge.
A number of issues make these digital processes difficult in relation to medieval handwritten documents. These include the degradation of the paper and soiling of the manuscript page, which can make automatic processes difficult. Regardless, in this work, we propose an investigation in both perspectives, character recognition and writer identification, in medieval manuscripts. Our experiments show interesting results, with good accuracy rates.