Skip to main content

A Rule-Based Approach to Form Mathematical Symbols in Printed Mathematical Expressions

  • Conference paper
Multi-disciplinary Trends in Artificial Intelligence (MIWAI 2011)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 7080))

Abstract

Automated understanding of mathematical expressions (MEs) is currently a challenging task due to their complex two- dimensional (2D) structure. Recognition of MEs can be online or offline and in either case, the process involves symbol recognition and analysis of 2D structure. This process is more complex for offline or printed MEs as they do not have temporal information. In our present work, we focus on the recognition of printed MEs and assume connected components (ccs) of a given ME image are labelled. Our approach to ME recognition comprises three stages,namely symbol formation, structural analysis and generation of encoding form like LATEX. In this paper, we present symbol formation process, where multi-cc symbols (like =, ≡ etc.) are formed, identity of context-dependent symbols (like a horizontal line can be MINUS, OVERBAR, FRACTION etc.) are resolved using spatial relations. Multi-line MEs like matrices and enumerated functions are also handled in this stage. A rule-based approach is proposed for the purpose, where the heuristics based on spatial relations are represented in the form of rules (knowledge) and those rules are fired depending on input data (labelled ccs). As knowledge is isolated from data like an expert system in our approach, it allows for easy adaptability and extensibility of the process. Proposed approach also handles both single-line and multi-line MEs in an unified manner. Our approach has been tested on around 800 MEs collected from various mathematical documents and experimental results are reported on them.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

References

  1. http://dcis.uohyd.ernet.in/~pavanp/mathocr/PrintedMEs.zip

  2. flex++(1):fast lexical analyzer generator-Linux man page, http://linux.die.net/man/1/flex++

  3. Awal, A.-M., Mouchere, H., Viard-Gaudin, C.: Towards handwritten mathematical expression recognition. In: ICDAR 2009, pp. 1046–1050. IEEE Computer Society, Washington, DC (2009)

    Google Scholar 

  4. Buchanan, B.G., Shortliffe, E.H.: Rule Based Expert Systems: The Mycin Experiments of the Stanford Heuristic Programming Project. Addison-Wesley (1984)

    Google Scholar 

  5. Chan, K.-F., Yeung, D.-Y.: Mathematical expression recognition: a survey. IJDAR 3, 3–15 (2000)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  6. Chaudhuri, B.B., Garain, U.: An approach for recognition and interpretation of mathematical expressions in printed document. Pattern Analysis and Applications 3, 120–131 (2000)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  7. Eto, Y., Suzuki, M.: Mathematical formula recognition using virtual link network. In: ICDAR 2001, pp. 762–767. IEEE Computer Society, Washington, DC (2001)

    Google Scholar 

  8. Fukuda, R., Sou, I., Tamari, F., Ming, X., Suzuki, M.: A technique of mathematical expression structure analysis for the handwriting input system. In: ICDAR 1999, p. 131. IEEE Computer Society, Washington, DC (1999)

    Google Scholar 

  9. Garain, U., Chaudhuri, B.B.: Recognition of online handwritten mathematical expressions. IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, Part B: Cybernetics 34(6), 2366–2376 (2004)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  10. Kanahori, T., Suzuki, M.: Detection of matrices and segmentation of matrix elements in scanned images of scientific documents. In: ICDAR 2003, vol. 1, p. 433. IEEE Computer Society, Washington, DC (2003)

    Google Scholar 

  11. Lee, H.J., Wang, J.S.: Design of a mathematical expression recognition system. In: ICDAR 1995, vol. 2, pp. 1084–1087 (1995)

    Google Scholar 

  12. Li, C., Zeleznik, R.C., Miller, T., LaViola, J.J.: Online recognition of handwritten mathematical expressions with support for matrices. In: ICPR 2008, pp. 1–4 (2008)

    Google Scholar 

  13. Suzuki, M., Tamari, F., Fukuda, R., Uchida, S., Kanahori, T.: Infty- an integrated OCR system for mathematical documents. In: Proceedings of ACM Symposium on Document Engineering 2003, pp. 95–104. ACM Press (2003)

    Google Scholar 

  14. Tapia, E., Rojas, R.: Recognition of on-line handwritten mathematical formulas in the E-Chalk System. In: ICDAR 2003, vol. 2, p. 980 (2003)

    Google Scholar 

  15. Tapia, E., Rojas, R.: Recognition of On-Line Handwritten Mathematical Expressions Using a Minimum Spanning Tree Construction and Symbol Dominance. In: Lladós, J., Kwon, Y.-B. (eds.) GREC 2003. LNCS, vol. 3088, pp. 329–340. Springer, Heidelberg (2004)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  16. Tian, X.-D., Li, H.-Y., Li, X.-F., Zhang, L.-P.: Research on symbol recognition for mathematical expressions. In: International Conference on Innovative Computing, Information and Control, vol. 3, pp. 357–360. IEEE Computer Society, Los Alamitos (2006)

    Google Scholar 

  17. Tian, X., Fan, H.: Structural analysis based on baseline in printed mathematical expressions. In: International Conference on Parallel and Distributed Computing Applications and Technologies, PDCAT 2005, pp. 787–790. IEEE Computer Society, Los Alamitos (2005)

    Google Scholar 

  18. Toshihiro, K., Masakazu, S.: A Recognition Method of Matrices by Using Variable Block Pattern Elements Generating Rectangular Area. In: Blostein, D., Kwon, Y.-B. (eds.) GREC 2001. LNCS, vol. 2390, pp. 320–329. Springer, Heidelberg (2002)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  19. Twaaliyondo, H.M., Okamoto, M.: Structure analysis and recognition of mathematical expressions. In: ICDAR 1995, vol. 1, p. 430. IEEE Computer Society, Washington, DC (1995)

    Google Scholar 

  20. Vuong, B.-Q., Hui, S.-C., He, Y.: Progressive structural analysis for dynamic recognition of on-line handwritten mathematical expressions. Pattern Recognition Letters 29, 647–655 (2008)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  21. Zanibbi, R., Blostein, D., Cordy, J.R.: Recognizing mathematical expressions using tree transformation. IEEE Transactions on PAMI 24, 1455–1467 (2002)

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2011 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

About this paper

Cite this paper

Kumar, P.P., Agarwal, A., Bhagvati, C. (2011). A Rule-Based Approach to Form Mathematical Symbols in Printed Mathematical Expressions. In: Sombattheera, C., Agarwal, A., Udgata, S.K., Lavangnananda, K. (eds) Multi-disciplinary Trends in Artificial Intelligence. MIWAI 2011. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 7080. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-25725-4_16

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-25725-4_16

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-25724-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-25725-4

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics