Richard Zanibbi
Associate Professor
Department of Computer Science, Center for Imaging Science (cross-appointment)
Director, Document and Pattern Recognition Laboratory
Rochester Institute of Technology (NY, USA)

Education: PhD, MSc, and BA(minor) (Computer Science);
BMusic; Queen's University, Kingston, ON, Canada
Member: IAPR, IEEE Computer Society


Office Hours: Tuesdays/Thursdays 2-4:00pm, or by appointment, Office: Golisano Rm. 3551
Schedule: Spring 2013; Winter 2012  Phone: (585) 475-5023 Email: rxzvcs @ rit edu, rlaz @ cs rit edu

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Research

The research problems that I work on involve pattern recognition, machine learning, information retrieval, and human-computer interaction. Currently my main research interests are the theory and tools used to construct pattern recognition systems, document recognition and retrieval (including OCR, and recognizing diagrammatic notations such as math), CAPTCHAs (test used to distinguish people from machines, e.g. using distorted text), and both text and image-based document retrieval.

I direct the Document and Pattern Recognition Laboratory in the Department of Computer Science. Through the DPRL, I have had the pleasure of working with a number of excellent undergraduate and graduate students from both the Department of Computer Science and the Center for Imaging Science. Demonstrations of their work, along with .pdf files for theses completed in the DPRL are available from the DRPL web pages.

Before joining RIT, I worked in a number of labs including the Centre for Pattern Recognition and Machine Intelligence, the Diagram Recognition and Medical Computing labs at Queen's University (Canada), Legasys Corporation (a legacy software solution company), and at the Xerox Research Center Webster here in Rochester.
FFES Screenshot

One application I've been involved with is DRACULAE, a program that parses a list of math symbols with locations to produce LaTeX and operator tree output. DRACULAE is part of the Freehand Formula Entry System (shown on the left), which is available for download. Here are some other math editors using recognition that I'm aware of:

  • XPress by Marco Pollanen and his students. This online program has a simple interface for placing symbols using a keyboard and mouse. DRACULAE is used to parse the symbols and produce LaTeX output.
  • Natural Log by Matsakis, Miller, and Viola (MIT)
  • JIMHR: (Java-Based) Interactive Math Handwriting Recognizer, a merge and port of FFES/DRACULAE and the Natural Log system by Joy-Gong Ho (Acuitus Corp., USA)
  • MathFoR project, includes JMathNotes by Ernesto Tapia (Free University of Berlin)
  • Infty by M. Suzuki et. al. (Kyushu University, Japan)
  • MathJournal by XThink Inc. As far as I know, this is the first commercial pen-based math recognition system
  • MathPad by Joseph LaViola (Univ. Central Florida)
  • MathBrush by George Labahn et al. (Univ. Waterloo)
  • Windows 7 includes handwritten math input (paper by Marko Panic).
  • Detexify a web-based application that retrieves LaTeX commands using hand-drawn symbols as queries (by Daniel Kirsch and Phillip Kühl)
  • Web Equation by VisionObjects Corporation (France).