1. About "InftyProject"

InftyProject is a voluntary R&D organization consisting of researchers from different universities and research institutes to investigate and develop new systems to process scientific information by computer. InftyProject is featured by its policy of research activity to have overriding priority in the application of the results of the research to practical system development, usable in research, education or welfare of science and technology.

2. Research and Development

The current main subjects of our research are the followings:

1. Research on the digitization technology of scientific documents
2. Research on the user interfaces for scientific information
3. Research on the accessibility of scientific information for visually impaired people, in collaboration with a nonprofit organization Science Accessibility Net.

Can computer recognize mathematical expressions printed on paper?
In the project, we are developing an integrated mathematical document reader system "InftyReader" using OCR (Optical Character Recognition). The system recognizes scanned page images of scientific documents including mathematical expressions and output the results in LaTeX, HTML, XML etc. It is developed in view of its application to retro-digitization of mathematical journals, to automatic transcription of scientific documents into Braille codes, etc.

Authoring Tool of Mathematical Documents --An Easy Learning Software of LaTeX
We released an authoring tool "InftyEditor" of mathematical documents, very easy and smooth to input mathematical expressions, with WYSIWYG environment. Mathematical symbols and expressions input from keyboard using LaTeX commands are displayed immediately in the form of printing style on the display of PC. With strong online help of command names list provided, user can use the editor as an easy and straight learning tool of LaTeX..
Edited results can be converted into LaTeX. MathML and HTML. The English edition of InftyEditor is a Free Software, while Japanese Edition is sold from Science Accessibility Net.

We are developing a handwriting interface to mathematical expressions (please see demos). The developed hand interface is included in InftyEditor as an alternative intuitive input interface for math expressions.

3. Software

Here is the list of the software released form InftyProject:

1. Math Document Reader "InftyReader" ----- Please have a look at OUTPUTS SAMPLES.
2. Authoring tool of Math Documents "InftyEditor"
3. Handwriting Interface for Math expressions -------Please have a look at some DEMOS
4. InftyEditor with speech output function, including math formulas, "ChattyInfty"

4. Database

• A Ground Truthed Database of Words/Math Formulae Images InftyCDB-1 and InftyCDB-2, InftyCDB-3

We released a ground-truthed image database, called InftyCDB-1, InftyCDB-2, InftyCDB-3, of words and mathematical expressions taken from math articles. The ground-truth of each character is composed of type, font, quality (touched/broken) and link (relative position), etc. The total number of characters and symbols in InftyCDB-1 is 688,570. InftyCDB-1 is a public database that is freely usable for research and development purposes. InftyCDB-2 is also of similar size.

Please visit the database site ( HERE ), for more detailed information.

5. Articles

1. Math Formula Recognition, Printed Scientific Document Recognition and Analysis
2. Handwriting interface for Math, Interactive math document, etc.
3. Mathematical Knowledge Management
4. Accessibility of Mathematical Information
5. Lectures given at International Conferences

6. Members and Contact.

1. Current members of InftyProject.
   
2. Contact Address of InftyProject:
   
   Masakazu Suzuki (Project leader)
   Professor emeritus of Kyushu University,
   Representative Director of NPO Science Accessibility Net
   Momochihama 3-4-11-103, Sawaraku, Fukuoka, 814-0001 JAPAN
   TEL&FAX +81-92-821-7344
   e-mail:msuzuki"@"kyudai.jp
   (Please remove the symbol ' before and after the mark @.)