Automatic Scribe Attribution for Medieval Manuscripts
Mats Dahllöf
We propose an automatic method for attributing manuscript pages to scribes. The system uses digital images as published by libraries. attribution process involves extracting from each query page approximately letter-size components. This is done means of binarization (ink-background separation), connected component labelling, and further segmentation, guided the estimated typical stroke width. Components are extracted in same way known scribal origin. allows us assign a scribe nearest-neighbour classification. Distance (dissimilarity) between components modelled simple features capturing distribution ink bounding box defined component, together with Euclidean distance. set component-level attributions, which typically includes hundreds page, then used predict voting procedure. who receives largest number votes 120 strongest attributions proposed its scribe. argument behind be visualized human reader. writing exhibited along matching pages. report thus open inspection analysis using methods intuitions traditional palaeography. present was evaluated on data covering 46 medieval scribes, Carolingian minuscule, Bastarda, few other scripts. achieved mean top-1 accuracy 98.3% regards first when labelled comprised one randomly selected nine unseen were attributed validation experiment repeated 50 times even out random variation effects.
Digital medievalist|DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals)|KTH Publication Database DiVA (KTH Royal Institute of Technology)