Multi-Script Off-Line Signature Verification

Abstract

Signature identification and verification are of great importance in authentication systems. In the field of signature verification, substantial investigation has been undertaken, mainly involving English signatures. Conversely, very few works have been conducted considering non-English signatures in signature verification research. Mainly Chinese, Japanese, Arabic and Persian signatures have been considered in the field of non-English signature verification. To the best of my knowledge, no research involving the signatures of Indian scripts have been considered in the field of non-English signature verification before this investigation is introduced. This research which considers signatures of Indian scripts is the first investigation proposed and presented in this area. Considerable research has previously been undertaken in the area of signature verification, particularly involving single-script signatures. On the other hand, no attention has been devoted to the task of multi-script signature verification. A multi-lingual country like India has many different scripts that are used for writing as well as for signing purposes based on different locations or regions. In India, a single official transaction sometimes needs signatures using more than one script. So, the consideration of signatures dealing with more than one or two scripts is an important task mainly for multi-lingual and multi-script countries. Development of a general multi-script signature verification system, which can verify signatures of all scripts, is very complicated and it is not possible to develop such a system in the Indian scenario. The verification accuracy in such multi-script signature environments will not be desirable compared to single script signature verification. To achieve the necessary accuracy for multi-script signature verification, it is first important to identify signatures based on the type of script and then use an individual single script signature verification system for the identified signature script. Based on this observation, in this research, the signatures of different scripts are separated to feed into the individual signature verification system.