17. The handwritten word recognition system of claim 16 , wherein the modified Viterbi algorithm is adapted to a variable duration hidden Markov model by incorporating state duration probabilities associated with each distinct character, wherein a state duration probability of a given distinct character represents a probability that the given character has a duration of a defined number of segments.
16. The handwritten word recognition system of claim 5 , wherein a modified Viterbi algorithm is used to determine the optimal string.