VashaNet: An automated system for recognizing handwritten Bangla basic characters using deep convolutional neural network

Abstract

Automated character recognition is currently highly popular due to its wide range of applications. Bengali handwritten character recognition (BHCR) is an extremely difficult issue because of the nature of the script. Very few handwritten character recognition (HCR) models are capable of accurately classifying all different sorts of Bangla characters. Recently, image recognition, video analytics, and natural language processing have all found great success using convolutional neural network (CNN) due to its ability to extract and classify features in novel ways. In this paper, we introduce a VashaNet model for recognizing Bangla handwritten basic characters. The suggested VashaNet model employs a 26-layer deep convolutional neural network (DCNN) architecture consisting of nine convolutional layers, six max pooling layers, two dropout layers, five batch normalization layers, one flattening layer, two dense layers, and one output layer. The experiment was performed over 2 datasets consisting of a primary dataset of 5750 images, CMATERdb 3.1.2 for the purpose of training and evaluating the model. The suggested character recognition model worked very well, with test accuracy rates of 94.60% for the primary dataset, 94.43% for CMATERdb 3.1.2 dataset. These remarkable outcomes demonstrate that the proposed VashaNet outperforms other existing methods and offers improved suitability in different character recognition tasks. The proposed approach is a viable candidate for the high efficient practical automatic BHCR system. The proposed approach is a more powerful candidate for the development of an automatic BHCR system for use in practical settings.

Keywords

• Artificial intelligence
• Character recognition
• Computer vision
• Deep convolutional neural network
• Image processing