DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.1194611
title: Firemaker Image Collection For Benchmarking  Forensic Writer Identification Using Image-Based Pattern Recognition

description: Disclaimer and terms of use:<br>
============================

/*****************************************************************************\<br>
*                                                                             *<br>
*                                                                             *<br>
*   This is the Firemaker NFI-images Distribution                             *<br>
*                                                                             *<br>
*   This distribution contains 1000 images of scanned handwritten text,       *<br>
*   scanned at resolution 300dpi grey scale, containing pages of              *<br>
*   handwritten text by 250 writers, four pages per writer, from four         *<br>
*   writing conditions, one condition per page. The conditions are:           *<br>
*   p1: copied, natural style, p2: copied, UPPER case, p3: copied and forged, *<br>
*   i.e.,"try to write in a different style than your natural style", and p4, *<br>
*   self generated, i.e., text produced to describe a given cartoon.          *<br>
*                                                                             *<br>
*                                                                             *<br>
*                                                                             *<br>
*   Copyright The International Unipen Foundation, 2000, All rights reserved  *<br>
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*                                                                             *<br>
*                                                                             *<br>
*  DISCLAIMER AND COPYRIGHT NOTICE FOR ALL DATA CONTAINED ON THIS CDROM:      *<br>
*                                                                             *<br>
*                                                                             *<br>
*  1) PERMISSION IS HEREBY GRANTED TO USE THE DATA FOR RESEARCH               *<br>
*     PURPOSES. IT IS NOT ALLOWED TO DISTRIBUTE THIS DATA FOR COMMERCIAL      *<br>
*     PURPOSES.                                                               *<br>
*                                                                             *<br>
*                                                                             *<br>
*  2) PROVIDER GIVES NO EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTY OF ANY KIND AND ANY       *<br>
*     IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR PURPOSE ARE       *<br>
*     DISCLAIMED.                                                             *<br>
*                                                                             *<br>
*  3) PROVIDER SHALL NOT BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, SPECIAL,         *<br>
*     INCIDENTAL OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES ARISING OUT OF ANY USE OF THIS      *<br>
*     DATA.                                                                   *<br>
*                                                                             *<br>
*  4) THE USER SHOULD REFER TO THE FIRST PUBLIC ARTICLE ON THIS DATA SET:     *<br>
*                                                                             *<br>
*     M. Bulacu, L. Schomaker & L. Vuurpijl (2003).                           *<br>
*     Writer identification using edge-based directional features.            *<br>
*     ICDAR '03: Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Document  *<br>
*     Analysis and Recognition, pp. 937-941.                                  *<br>
*     Piscataway: IEEE Computer, ISBN 0-7695-1960-1                           *<br>
*                                                                             *<br>
*  5) THE RECIPIENT SHOULD REFRAIN FROM PROLIFERATING THE DATA SET TO THIRD   *<br>
*  PARTIES EXTERNAL TO HIS/HER LOCAL RESEARCH GROUP. PLEASE REFER INTERESTED  *<br>
*  RESEARCHERS TO HTTP://UNIPEN.ORG FOR OBTAINING THEIR OWN COPY.             *<br>
\*****************************************************************************/

BibTeX entry:                                                               

  @inproceedings{Firemaker,                                                  <br>
    author = {Bulacu, M. and Schomaker, L.R.B. and Vuurpijl, L.},    <br>
    title = {Writer Identification Using Edge-Based Directional Features},<br>
    booktitle = {ICDAR '03: Proceedings of the 7th International <br>
                 Conference on Document Analysis and Recognition},<br>
    year = {2003},<br>
    isbn = {0-7695-1960-1},<br>
    pages = {937-941},<br>
    publisher = {IEEE Computer Society},<br>
    address = {Washington, DC, USA},<br>
   }

In the project "Vergelijk", a grant obtained from the Dutch Forensic Science<br>
Institute, two existing professional writer-identification systems have been <br>
compared regarding usability studies and in particular recognition <br>
performance (Schomaker & Vuurpijl, 2000). The results of this comparison <br>
are contained in a confidential report:

  L.R.B. Schomaker and L.G. Vuurpijl (2000). <br>
  Forensic writer identification: A benchmark data set <br>
  and a comparison of two systems. Technical report, <br>
  Nijmegen Institute for Cognition and Information (NICI), <br>
  University of Nijmegen, The Netherlands.

Informative and non-confidential details from this report are <br>
given in the accompanying file:  'firemaker-dbase.pdf'

To compare both systems, a carefully designed experiment was conducted to<br>
record handwritten samples from male and female writers in several conditions:

Condition 1: Normal constrained handwriting<br>
==============================================

Below, the Dutch text writers had to produce in normal handwriting is given. 

--- start text ----<br>
Zij bezochten veilingen en reisden met de KLM. Voor<br>
korte afstanden huurden ze een auto, meestal een VW<br>
of een Ford.<br>
&lt;EMPTY LINE&gt;<br>
De veilingen waren van 7-4-1993 tot 3-5-1993 in New<br>
York, Tokyo, Québec, Rome, Parijs, Zürich en Oslo.<br>
&lt;EMPTY LINE&gt;<br>
Omdat de veilingen steeds begonnen om 12 uur en je<br>
gemiddeld 200 tot 300 kilometer moest rijden,<br>
stonden zij steeds om 6.30 uur op en vertrokken om<br>
8 uur uit het hotel.<br>
&lt;EMPTY LINE&gt;<br>
Elke dag hadden ze vijfhonderd (f 500,-) gulden<br>
nodig. Daarvoor gebruikten ze elke keer een cheque<br>
van tweehonderd (f 200,-) en een cheque van<br>
driehonderd (f 300,-) gulden. Aan geschenken gaven<br>
ze ongeveer honderd gulden (f 100,-) uit.<br>
--- end text ----

<br>
Condition 2: Production of constrained block capital handwriting<br>
================================================================

In this condition, the writers had to produce the following text<br>
in block-capital handwriting:

--- start text ----<br>
NADAT ZE IN NEW YORK, TOKYO, QUÉBEC, PARIJS, ZÜRICH<br>
EN OSLO WAREN GEWEEST, VLOGEN ZE UIT DE USA TERUG<br>
MET VLUCHT KL 658 OM 12 UUR.<br>
&lt;empty line&gt;<br>
ZE KWAMEN AAN IN DUBLIN OM 7 UUR EN IN AMSTERDAM OM<br>
9.40 UUR 'S AVONDS. DE FIAT VAN BOB EN DE VW VAN<br>
DAVID STONDEN IN R3 VAN HET PARKEERTERREIN.<br>
HIERVOOR MOESTEN ZE HONDERD GULDEN (F 100,-)<br>
BETALEN.<br>
--- end text ----

<br>
Condition 3: Production of free-forged handwriting<br>
==================================================

Below, the text writers had to produce in the free-forged handwriting<br>
condition is given. No example of handwriting is given which they have to<br>
mimick (forge), the condition concerns a self-conceived distorted <br>
handwriting style.

--- start text ----<br>
Nog dezelfde avond reden ze naar hun vrienden<br>
Chris, Emile, Jan, Irene en Henk, nadat ze hun<br>
vriendinnen Greta en Maria hadden opgehaald.<br>
&lt;EMPTY LINE&gt;<br>
Samen hadden ze vijfhonderd (500) zeldzame<br>
postzegels gekocht, Bob driehonderd (300) en David<br>
tweehonderd (200).<br>
&lt;EMPTY LINE&gt;<br>
De reis was de moeite waard geweest.<br>
--- end text ----

<br>
Condition 4: Production of unconstrained handwriting<br>
====================================================

The final text writers had to produce is unconstrained handwriting.<br>
The cartoon, a series of pictures concerning a 'UFO' landing had<br>
to be described in their own words, in at least six lines of text.<br>
See image file "space.gif".

<br>
Thruth labels and writer identifications<br>
========================================

Each writer has a unique id, specified as:

   id:   {num}{set}<br>
  num:   a three-digit number<br>
 set:    either 01, 02, 03 or 04, identifying one of the 4 experiments

The vast majority of the writers producing sets 01, 02 and 03 mimicked the<br>
content and layout (empty lines) of the constrained texts they had to copy<br>
sufficiently accurately, such that the example texts are a good indication of<br>
the contents. However, as set 04 ("describe cartoon story")  contains<br>
unconstrained self-generated handwriting, the corresponding thruth  labels had<br>
to be extracted manually. The resulting label files are contained in  the<br>
directory ./300dpi/p4-self-natural/labels/

Note: no letter, word, line or paragraph segmentation is provided with this<br>
data set. The main text can be cropped easily. Since the orientation is<br>
horizontal, projection techniques can be used to extract lines, using<br>
a line-spacing parameter (~94 pixels line height) as an additional check. 

<br>
Overview of directories:

300dpi/<br>
   p1-copy-normal/      Copying task, normal writing style  <br>
   p2-copy-upper/       Copying task, UPPER-case <br>
   p3-copy-forged/      Copying task, instructed to mimic another script style<br>
   p4-self-natural/     Self-generated text, natural writing condition

Note: the original raw collection contained writer #155, who has been removed<br>
from this data set, as his first condition (p1) was started in upper case and<br>
the page was not  completed. Deleted files were 15501.tif, 15502.tif, 15503.tif<br>
and 15504.tif.

Note: the name of this data set (Firemaker) is a contraction of the names<br>
Vuurpijl and Schomaker.

Note b: Example of a cutout of essential handwritten text using NetPBM tools:  <br>
 tifftopnm 15201.tif | pnmcut -left 50 -right 2400 -top 700 -bottom 3250 &gt; handwriting.pgm

 For an experiment, the upper and lower halves of the resulting image were<br>
 usually used in the Schomaker & Bulacu studies to obtain two samples of <br>
 handwriting for a writer.

 http://www.ai.rug.nl/~lambert<br>
 http://www.ai.rug.nl/~bulacu

Our features for writer identification:

Lambert Schomaker<br>
 http://www.ai.rug.nl/~lambert/allographic-fraglet-codebooks/allographic-fraglet-codebooks.html<br>
 L. Schomaker & M. Bulacu (2004). <br>
 Automatic writer identification using connected-component contours and edge-based features of upper-case Western script. <br>
 IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, Vol 26(6), June 2004, pp. 787 - 798.

Marius Bulacu<br>
 http://www.ai.rug.nl/~lambert/hinge/hinge-transform.html<br>
 Bulacu, M. & Schomaker, L.R.B. (2007). <br>
 Text-independent Writer Identification and Verification Using Textural and Allographic Features, <br>
 IEEE Trans. on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence (PAMI), Special Issue - Biometrics: Progress and Directions, April, 29(4), p. 701-717.

Axel Brink<br>
 http://www.ai.rug.nl/~axel/  'Quill' feature<br>
 A.A. Brink, J. Smit, M.L. Bulacu, and L.R.B. Schomaker (2011). <br>
 Writer identification using directional ink-trace width measurements, <br>
 Pattern Recognition (July 2011), doi: 10.1016/j.patcog.2011.07.005<br>
 <br>
These three feature groups (hinge, fraglets, quill) have been combined in<br>
a single MS Windows application, GIWIS which is available for scientific<br>
use upon request (schomaker@ai.rug.nl)

Note c.

The accompanying file 'Firemaker-writer-info.dat' contains some<br>
writer information: <br>
Column 1: writer identification code<br>
Column 2: sex<br>
Column 3: handedness, <br>
Column 4: age in years<br>
Column 5: major Western script group (print,cursive or mixed)<br>
description: {"references": ["L. Schomaker & M. Bulacu (2004).   Automatic writer identification using connected-component contours and edge-based features of upper-case Western script.   IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, Vol 26(6), June 2004, pp. 787 - 798.", "Bulacu, M. & Schomaker, L.R.B. (2007).   Text-independent Writer Identification and Verification Using Textural and Allographic Features,   IEEE Trans. on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence (PAMI), Special Issue - Biometrics: Progress and Directions, April, 29(4), p. 701-717.", "A.A. Brink, J. Smit, M.L. Bulacu, and L.R.B. Schomaker (2011).   Writer identification using directional ink-trace width measurements,   Pattern Recognition (July 2011), doi: 10.1016/j.patcog.2011.07.005"]}