在单笔画符号( 或字符) 联机手写识别中，动态时间规正( DTW) 算法遵循时间次序约束和边界约束，并具有较高的识别率．为了将此算法应用于多笔画符号识别，常用而简单的方法是按照人们的手写顺序连接多笔画符号为单笔画符号．但此方法存在一个问题: 人们常使用不同的笔画顺序和笔画方向书写同一个符号，用朴素( Brute Force) 方法寻找所有笔画可能性非常耗时．为了降低计算复杂度， 文中提出了 DTW A *算法．在部分笔画匹配时，此算法保留着次序约束，并用 A * 算法降低计算复杂度． 文中还通过流程图数据库多笔画符号识别实验对比了 DTW A * 算法、DTW 算法、改良Hausdorff 距离3 种算法的性能，结果表明 DTW A *算法具有最高的识别率和最好的稳定性．

Dynamic time warping (DTW) is a famous algorithm to compare two mono- stroke symbols online.It obeys boundary and continuity constraints and possesses high recognition rate.The extension of DTW to multi-stroke symbols raises specific problems.A naive solution is to convert the multi- stroke symbol into a single one via a direct concatenation in the handwriting order.However,people may write a symbol in different stroke di-rections and orders.The application of a brute force method by searching all the possible directions and orders leads to prohibitive calculation times.To reduce the searching complexity,DTW A * algorithm,which keeps the continuity constraint during each partial matching and reduces the searching complexity by using the A * al-gorithm,is proposed and is then tested on a flowchart dataset containing multi- stroke symbols.The results indi-cate that DTW A * algorithm helps to achieve the highest recognition rate and stability,as compared with such two other algorithms as DTW and modified Hausdorff distance.