Scribal Attribution Using a Novel 3-D Quill-Curvature Feature Histogram

In this paper, we propose a novel pipeline for automated scribal attribution based on the Quill feature: 1) We compensate the Quill feature histogram for pen changes and page warping. 2) We add curvature as a third dimension in the feature histogram, to better separate characteristics like loops and lines. 3) We also investigate the use of several dissimilarity measures between the feature histograms. 4) We propose and evaluate semi-supervised learning for classification, to reduce the need of labeled samples. Our evaluation is performed on 1104 pages from a 15th century Swedish manuscript. It was chosen because it represents a significant part of Swedish manuscripts of said period. Our results show that only a few percent of the material need labelling for average precisions above 95%. Our novel curvature and registration extensions, together with semi-supervised learning, outperformed the current Quill feature.