how to segment the connected characters

Hi, i want to segment the connected characters as shown in the following figure (thinned image), is there any algorithm or matlab code available to do so?

Answer 1

[Image Analyst]

I don't think so unless you make some assumptions, like there should be 4 characters there. But they could be split at a variety of places, for example at the hump in the h or at the bottom between the h and the 2 (or Z), so how would the algorithm know? Or unless you tried a bunch of splits and tried to figure out which split gave the highest probability of returning a known character.

[Alina hui]

ok sir thanks for response, can we use contour/morphological analysis of characters, if yes then is there any available algorithm/ matlab code to do the contour analysis of English alphabets?

[Walter Roberson]

http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/?term=tag%3A%22cursive%22

[Image Analyst]

See section 23.4 here for lots of ways people have done it: http://www.visionbib.com/bibliography/contentschar.html#OCR,%20Document%20Analysis%20and%20Character%20Recognition%20Systems