A benchmark dataset for Manipuri Meetei-Mayek handwritten character recognition

A benchmark dataset is always required for any classification or
recognition system. To the best of our knowledge, no benchmark dataset
exists for handwritten character recognition of Manipuri Meetei-Mayek
script in public domain so far. Manipuri, also referred to as
Meeteilon or sometimes Meiteilon, is a Sino-Tibetan language and also one
of the Eight Scheduled languages of Indian Constitution. It is the
official language and lingua franca of the southeastern Himalayan state of
Manipur, in northeastern India. This language is also used by a
significant number of people as their communicating language over the
north-east India, and some parts of Bangladesh and Myanmar. It is the most
widely spoken language in Northeast India after Bengali and Assamese
languages. In this work, we introduce a handwritten Manipuri
Meetei-Mayek character dataset which consists of more than 5000 data
samples which were collected from a diverse population group that belongs
to different age groups (from 4 years to 60 years), genders, educational
backgrounds, occupations, communities from three different districts of
Manipur, India (Imphal East District, Thoubal District and Kangpokpi
District) during March and April 2019. Each individual was asked to write
down all the Manipuri characters on one A4-size paper. The recorded
responses are scanned with the help of a scanner and then each character
is manually segmented from the scanned images. This dataset
consists of segmented scanned images of handwritten Manipuri Meetei-Mayek
characters (Mapi Mayek, Lonsum Mayek, Cheitap Mayek, Cheising Mayek,
Khutam Mayek) of size 128X128 pixels in .JPG format as well as in .MAT
format.