Off-line writer verification using shape and pen pressure information

This paper proposes an off-line writer verification method which uses a new hybrid feature. The characteristics of this new feature are the combination of shape and pen pressure information. For shape information, we use the Weighted Direction code Histogram (WDH), which is often used in Japanese handwriting recognition and writer verification methods. For pen pressure information, we use the texture features of infrared (IR) images obtained from a multi-band image scanner. Although the simple use of pen pressure information encoded in the infrared image can not improve verification error rate, the use of second order statistics and the clipping process can decrease the verification error rate from 4.8% to 3.7%.