How to approach this handwritten digit recognition? I have multiple pictures that look exactly like the one below this text. I'm trying to train CNN to read the digits for me. Problem is isolating the digits. They could be written in any shape, way, and position that person who is writing them wanted to. I thought of maybe training another CNN to recognize the position/location of the digits, but I'm not sure how to approach the problem. But, I need to get rid of that string and underline. Any clue would be a great one. Btw. I would love to get the 28x28 format just like the one in MNIST.

Thanks up front.
I think one approach you can try to segment the digits and Connected Components Labeling (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connected-component_labeling).
With it, you'll end up with a label for each letter and then you can try to find the convex hull of the letter.
After that, just crop a square for each convex hull and input it to your CNN.
Notice that it will only if there is at least one pixel between the letters...