Is There a Difference between Paper and Electronic Chinese Signatures?

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to investigate whether there are differences in handwritten Chinese signatures on different media including paper and electronic devices. Participants were asked to sign specified names on various types of media and the signatures were scanned or saved digitally for subsequent analysis. In this study, using convolutional neural networks and Siamese neural networks as classifiers and comparators, the performance plunge is revealed and thus considerable dissimilarity between the signatures on different media is implied. To further explore this, cubic Bézier curves are fitted to the signatures using the least square method for quantitative statistical analysis. By analyzing the visual changes in the morphology of strokes, several features of signatures are selected and computed, and the paired t‐test and the Wilcoxon signed‐rank test are implemented, which provides a deeper substantiation and explanation of the findings.