Arabic Manuscript Author Verification Using Deep Convolutional Networks

In this paper, we propose an automatic method for manuscript author verification based on an analysis of consecutive patches extracted from an image. The classification algorithm uses a deep convolutional network with two types of patch extraction: one based on connected components and the other based on usage of a fixed-size sliding window. We apply this method to verify the authorship of the Arabic manuscript entitled al-Khitat attributed to the hand of the renowned medieval Arab historian al-Maqrizi. Using appropriately collected ground-truth labeled data for convolutional network training purpose, our method has demonstrated promising results when applied to previously unseen manuscripts.