Automatic Segmentation of Chinese Characters as Wire-Frame Models

There exist thousands of Chinese characters, used across several countries and languages. Their huge number induces various processing difficulties by computers. One challenging topic is for example the automatic font generation for such characters. Also, as these characters are in many cases recursive compounds, pattern (i.e. sub-character) detection is an insightful topic. In this paper, aiming at addressing such issues, we describe a segmentation method for Chinese characters, producing wire-frame models, thusvectorgraphics, compared to conventional raster approaches. While raster output would enable only very limited reusing of these wire-frame models, vector output would for instance support the automatic generation of vector fonts (Adobe Type 1, Apple True Type, etc.) for such characters. Our approach also enables significant performance increase compared to the raster approach. The proposed method is then experimented with a list of several Chinese characters. Next, the method is empirically evaluated and its average time complexity is assessed.