An expert vision system for analysis of Hebrew characters and authentication of manuscripts

This paper describes a knowledge based system that helps scribes to authenticate Hebrew manuscripts for which accurate laws of calligraphy have been given to the scribes. Paleographic expertise is also included in order to characterize the size of the document and the writing. When used for authentication purposes, the system shortens the task of the scribe by pointing out the parts of the document or the characters where problems arise for the machine (low contrast, breaks, ambiguous shape). The scribe will then operate on a restricted part of the document and decide whether it has to be corrected or not. In order to be close to human mechanisms of interpretation, the system structure includes several analysis levels. This system uses some principles of intelligent vision systems that can set up image and document analysis strategies as well as interactions between the high level and low level procedures. It works directly on grey level pictures.