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This book provides the researchers and developers working in the field of automatic text recognition (ATR) with (A) a comprehensive survey that covers most of the printed and handwritten Arabic text databases available in the literature, (B) a detailed description of the construction process of a comprehensive printed Arabic text database called PATDB, (C) a detailed specification of PATDB that presents (i) the different image formats that are used, (ii) the naming convention and file hierarchy structure that are followed when uploading files and records to PATDB, and (iii) the actual size of storage that is required to include all scanned and annotated documents in PATDB, (D) a description of a developed software system that is used to (i) manage and annotate the Arabic text documents uploaded to the PATDB (ii) in addition to providing a set of basic image processing functions.

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Amin Alhashim is currently a lecturer at King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals (KFUPM), Saudi Arabia. He completed his MSc degree in CS on June 2009 and his BS degree in CS (conferred with Second Honors) on June 2005. Both of his degrees were got from KFUPM.

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