/Laia

Laia: A deep learning toolkit for HTR based on Torch

Primary LanguageLuaMIT LicenseMIT

Laia: A deep learning toolkit for HTR

Build Status

Laia is a deep learning toolkit to transcribe handwritten text images.

If you find this toolkit useful in your research, please cite:

@misc{laia2016,
  author = {Joan Puigcerver, Daniel Martin-Albo, Mauricio Villegas},
  title = {Laia: A deep learning toolkit for HTR},
  year = {2016},
  publisher = {GitHub},
  note = {GitHub repository},
  howpublished = {\url{https://github.com/jpuigcerver/Laia}},
}

Installation

Laia is implemented in Torch, and depends on the following:

Note that currently we only support GPU. You need to use NVIDIA's cuDNN library. Register first for the CUDA Developer Program (it's free) and download the library from NVIDIA's website.

Once Torch is installed the following luarocks are required:

And execute luarocks install https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jpuigcerver/Laia/master/rocks/laia-scm-1.rockspec.

Usage

Training a Laia model using CTC:

Create an "empty" model using:

laia-create-model \
    "$CHANNELS" "$INPUT_HEIGHT" "$((NUM_SYMB+1))" "$MODEL_DIR/model.t7";

Positional arguments:

  • $CHANNELS: number of channels of the input images.
  • $INPUT_HEIGHT: height of the input images. Note: ALL image must have the same height.
  • $((NUM_SYMB+1)): number of output symbols. Note: Include ONE additional element for the CTC blank symbol.
  • $MODEL_DIR/model.t7: path to the output model.

For optional arguments check laia-create-model -h or laia-create-model -H.

Train the model using:

laia-train-ctc \
    "$MODEL_DIR/model.t7" \
    "$SYMBOLS_TABLE" \
    "$TRAIN_LST" "$TRAIN_GT" "$VALID_LST" "$VALID_GT";

Positional arguments:

  • $MODEL_DIR/model.t7 is the path to the input model or checkpoint for training.
  • $SYMBOLS_TABLE is the list of training symbols and their id.
  • $TRAIN_LST is a file containing a list of images for training.
  • $TRAIN_GT is a file containing the list of training transcripts.
  • $VALID_LST is a file containing a list of images for validation.
  • $VALID_GT is a file containing the list of validation transcripts.

For optional arguments check laia-train-ctc -h or laia-create-model -H.

Transcribing

laia-decode "$MODEL_DIR/model.t7" "$TEST_LST";

Positional arguments:

  • $MODEL_DIR/model.t7 is the path to the model.
  • $TEST_LST is a file containing a list of images for testing.

For optional arguments check laia-decode -h.

Example

For a more detailed example, see the Spanish Numbers README.md in egs/spanish-numbers folder, or the IAM README.md in egs/iam folder.