JP2749946B

PURPOSE:To stabilize an extracted feature even in an inclined character pattern and to make it unnecessary to use a dictionary corresponding to the deformation of character inclination by detecting the inclination angle of a character pattern and setting up a division boundary based on the inclination angle. CONSTITUTION:On a plane expressed by an X-Y coordinate system including a character pattern stored in a pattern register 4, coordinates applying the maximum and minimum values of alphax + betay relating to black picture elements (BPEs) in the character pattern are detected by a character inclination detector 8. The inclination angle of the pattern is detected based on the coordinate. A feature matrix extracting part 10 sets up a division boundary in accordance with the inclination angle and extracts a feature matrix. Thereby, extracted features can be stabilized even in the case of an inclined character pattern, so that the use of a dictionary corresponding to the deformation of character inclination is made unnecessary. Consequently, a collating time can be shortened and a processing speed can be increased.