Offline Assamese Handwritten Text Dataset (OAHTD)

In recent years, there has been a growing interest in analyzing Indian handwritten documents. In pattern recognition, particularly handwritten document recognition, the availability of standard databases is essential for assessing algorithm efficiency and facilitating result comparisons among research groups. However, there is a notable scarcity of standardized databases for handwritten texts in Indian languages. This paper presents a comprehensive methodology for developing a novel, unconstrained dataset named OAHTD (Offline Assamese Handwritten Text Dataset) for the Assamese language, derived from offline handwritten documents. The dataset, which represents a significant contribution to the field of Optical Character Recognition (OCR) for handwritten Assamese, is the first of its kind in this domain. The corpus comprises 410 document images, each containing various linguistic elements including words, numerals, individual characters, and various symbols. These documents were collected from a demographically diverse cohort of 300 contributors, spanning an age range of 10 to 76 years and representing varied educational backgrounds and genders. This meticulously curated collection aims to provide a robust foundation for developing and evaluating OCR algorithms specifically tailored to the Assamese script, addressing a critical gap in the existing literature and resources for this language.