BDNet: Bengali Handwritten Numeral Digit Recognition based on Densely connected Convolutional Neural Networks

Abstract Images of handwritten digits are different from natural images as the orientation of a digit, as well as similarity of features of different digits, makes confusion. On the other hand, deep convolutional neural networks are achieving huge success in computer vision problems, especially in image classification. Here, we propose a task-oriented model called Bengali handwritten numeral digit recognition based on densely connected convolutional neural networks (BDNet). BDNet is used to classify (recognize) Bengali handwritten numeral digits. It is end-to-end trained using ISI Bengali handwritten numeral dataset. During training, untraditional data preprocessing and augmentation techniques are used so that the trained model works on a different dataset. The model has achieved the test accuracy of 99.78% (baseline was 99.58%) on the test dataset of ISI Bengali handwritten numerals. So, the BDNet model gives 47.62% error reduction compared to previous state-of-the-art models. Here we have also created a dataset of 1000 images of Bengali handwritten numerals to test the trained model, and it giving promising results. Codes, trained model and our own dataset are available at C : https://github.com/Sufianlab/BDNet .