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Generative Handwritten Text Separation and Recognition for Palimpsests Modeling
Uppsala University, Disciplinary Domain of Science and Technology, Mathematics and Computer Science, Department of Information Technology.
2025 (English)Independent thesis Advanced level (degree of Master (Two Years)), 20 credits / 30 HE creditsStudent thesis
Abstract [en]

This project aims to uncover obscured texts hidden within damaged palimpsests. Generative methods for palimpsest text separation using deep neural networks are investigated together with handwritten text recognition. The Generative Adversarial Network (GAN) Pix2pix as well as a custom Denoising Diffusion Model (cDDM) modified to learn structured noise, is trained to identify partially hidden under-texts and generate restorations of them. The output from the generative networks are recognized and transcribed with AttentionHTR, a pre-trained network for handwritten text recognition which is fine-tuned for each of the generated datasets. The experimental setup consists of multiple datasets, two synthetically created in this work, where MNIST and parts of the historical handwritten texts from Saint Galls dataset are extracted and used as undertexts. Additionally, a third public synthetic dataset created to closely simulate the multi-spectral parts of the real Georgian palimpsests is included. Pix2pix and cDDM both perform well for the task of text separation, where different strengths become apparent in relation to the datasets. Additionally, the impact multi-spectral imaging has for revealing previously occluded or unseen texts is highlighted with three samples of multi-spectral data captured with the first Multi-spectral Imaging System for Historical Artifacts (MISHA) ever built in Sweden. The ultimate goal of this work is to render the once barely legible remnants of our medieval past accessible once again.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
2025. , p. 58
Series
IT ; mBM 25 008
Keywords [en]
Generative Networks, Diffusion Models, Image Processing, Palimpsests, Handwritten Text Separation, Handwritten Text Recognition, Multispectral Imaging
National Category
Artificial Intelligence
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-565118OAI: oai:DiVA.org:uu-565118DiVA, id: diva2:1989374
Educational program
Master's Programme in Image Analysis and Machine Learning
Supervisors
Examiners
Available from: 2025-08-18 Created: 2025-08-15 Last updated: 2025-08-18Bibliographically approved

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Generative Handwritten Text Separation and Recognition for Palimpsests Modeling(31521 kB)403 downloads
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CiteExportLink to record
Permanent link

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Cite
Citation style
  • apa
  • ieee
  • modern-language-association-8th-edition
  • vancouver
  • Other style
More styles
Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
  • fi-FI
  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • sv-SE
  • Other locale
More languages
Output format
  • html
  • text
  • asciidoc
  • rtf