Arabic script is cursive in both handwritten and printed form. Segmentation of Arabic script- especially handwritten- is a very challenging task. Many difficulties arise due to the inherent characteristics of Arabic writing such as the overlapping of Arabic sub-words wherein the sub-words share the same vertical space, and vertical ligatures wherein characters are stacked upon each other in a word. In this paper, an algorithm to resolve the overlapping of handwritten Arabic sub-words is introduced. The proposed algorithm is based on pushing strategy; sub-words are pushed in order to obtain a clear vertical cut separating the sub-words. The proposed algorithm was tested using handwritten text selected from four different datasets and the results are quite promising.

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Arabic Sub-words Overlapping Arabic Sub-words Resolving Overlapped Arabic Sub-words.