Deep learning for ancient scripts recognition: A CapsNet-LSTM based approach

Efficient character recognition in ancient handwritten Devanagari documents is crucial for societal advancements. Challenges such as overlapping characters, missing headlines, and over-inked stains further complicate the recognition process. In response, we propose a Capsule Network (CapsNet) with LSTM to address hierarchical temporal dependencies in Devanagari scripts, following initial implementation of a simple CNN. We also explored a combined CNN+LSTM architecture for character recognition, leveraging CNN’s feature extraction capabilities with LSTM’s sequential modeling to handle temporal dependencies in Devanagari scripts. Our experimentation involved a dataset of 10,825 characters from ancient Devanagari manuscripts, encompassing basic characters, modifiers, and conjuncts, classified into 399 classes. Testing various training–testing ratios (9:1, 8:2, and 7:3), we visually and statistically evaluated the experimental data, demonstrating the superiority of CapsNet and LSTM in handling these challenges. We calculated recognition accuracy, precision, and recall values, with CapsNet achieving a maximum accuracy of 95.98% after 30 epochs. This research underscores the effectiveness of CapsNet and LSTM in advancing character recognition for ancient Devanagari manuscripts.