Automatic Braille Music Score Conversion to Playable Music using Image Processing

Braille music score is a Braille code that allows music to be notated using Braille cells so that music can be read by visually impaired musicians. It uses the same six-position Braille cell as literary Braille but has entirely separate meaning to each braille symbol or group of symbols and has its own syntax and abbreviations. Thus it makes it difficult for the reader to learn the Braille music. Hence, we propose a system that converts Braille sheet music to playable audio in Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI) format. This involves a series of image processing techniques to enhance the Braille dots and reduce the noise. These are then mapped to a set of musical notes in the form of Octaves which are converted to MIDI format by Optical Music Recognition (OMR). The output can either be sent to music editor software to edit or retrieve music information or can be played in MIDI format depending upon the user's choice. Thus, the proposed system allows visually impaired and vision musician society to easily learn braille music scores