Character recognition apparatus that subdivides a character into subregions to obtain feature vectors

A character recognition apparatus comprising:

• contouring direction feature extracting means for extracting a contouring direction feature vector which is used for recognizing a character from an inputted character image, and
• character recognition means for extracting recognition candidate characters based on the contouring direction feature vector extracted by said contouring direction feature extracting means, wherein
• said contouring direction feature extracting means has
• contouring direction code imparting means for obtaining, for each contour point of an inputted character image, contouring direction codes in which a direction of a contour line of a character is quantized in at least four directions, from at least a pattern of pixels adjacent to the contour point;
• contouring direction code frequency calculation means for obtaining a frequency of each of the obtained contouring direction codes, for each subregion obtained by dividing the character image into M sections in a horizontal direction and N sections in a vertical direction;
• and
• contouring direction code space blurring means for obtaining the contour direction feature vector, on the basis of the obtained frequency, by conducting, for each contouring direction code, a weighted addition on the frequency of each subregion (A) by adding, with a predetermined weight coefficient, the frequency of a subregion in the vicinity of the subregion (A).