Skip to main content

Automatic License Plate Recognition System Based on Color Image Processing

  • Conference paper

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNTCS,volume 3483))

Abstract

A License plate recognition (LPR) system can be divided into the following steps: preprocessing, plate region extraction, plate region thresholding, character segmentation, character recognition and post-processing. For step 2, a combination of color and shape information of plate is used and a satisfactory extraction result is achieved. For step 3, first channel is selected, then threshold is computed and finally the region is thresholded. For step 4, the character is segmented along vertical, horizontal direction and some tentative optimizations are applied. For step 5, minimum Euclidean distance based template matching is used. And for those confusing characters such as ’8’ & ’B’ and ’0’ & ’D’, a special processing is necessary. And for the final step, validity is checked by machine and manual. The experiment performed by program based on aforementioned algorithms indicates that our LPR system based on color image processing is quite quick and accurate.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.

Buying options

Chapter
USD   29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD   139.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Learn about institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

References

  1. Ballard, D.H.: Computer vision. Prentice-Hall Inc., Englewood Cliffs (1991)

    Google Scholar 

  2. Ahmed, M.J., Sarfraz, M., Zidouri, A., Alkhatib, W.G.: License Plate Recognition System. In: The Proceedings of The 10th IEEE International Conference On Electronics, Circuits And Systems (ICECS 2003), Sharjah, United Arab Emirates (UAE) (2003)

    Google Scholar 

  3. Sarfraz, M., Ahmed, M., Ghazi, S.A.: Saudi Arabian License Plate Recognition System. In: The Proceedings of IEEE International Conference on Geoemetric Modeling and Graphics-GMAG 2003. IEEE Computer Society Press, London (2003)

    Google Scholar 

  4. Chang, S.-L., Chen, L.-S., Chung, Y.-C., Chen, S.-W.: Automatic license plate recognition. IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems 5(1), 42–53 (2004)

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  5. Cao, G., Chen, J., Jiang, J.: An adaptive approach to vehicle license plate localization, IECON 2003. In: The 29th Annual Conference of the IEEE Industrial Electronics Society, vol. 2, pp. 1786–1791 (2003)

    Google Scholar 

  6. Lanayama, K., Fujikawa, Y., Fujimoto, K., Horino, M.: Development of Vehicle License Number Recognition System Using Real-time, Image Processing and its Application to Travel-Time Measurement. In: Proceedings of the 41st IEEE Vehicular Technology Conference, pp. 798–804 (1991)

    Google Scholar 

  7. Kim, K.M., Lee, B.J., Lyou, K., Park, G.T.: The automatic Recognition of the Plate of Vehicle Using the Correlation Coefficient and Hough Transform. Journal of Control, Automation and Systems Engineering 3(5), 511–519 (1997)

    Google Scholar 

  8. Shridhar, M., Miller, J.W., Houle, G., Bijnagte, L.: Recognition of License Plate Images: Issues and Perspectives. In: Proceedings of International Conference on Document Analysis and Recognition, pp. 17–20 (1999)

    Google Scholar 

  9. Kim, S., Kim, D., Ryu, Y., Kim, G.: A Robust License-plate Extraction Method under Complex Image Conditions. In: Proceedings 16th International Conference on Pattern Recognition (ICPR 2002), vol. 3, pp. 216–219 (2002)

    Google Scholar 

  10. Choi, H.J.: A Study on the Extraction and Recognition of a Car Number Plate by Image Processing. Journal of Korea Institute of Telematics and Electronics (KITE) 24(2), 309–315 (1987)

    Google Scholar 

  11. Cheon, B.T., et al.: The Extraction of a Number Plate from a Moving car. In: Proc. of First Workshop on Character Recognition, pp. 133–136 (1993)

    Google Scholar 

  12. Chong, H.S., Cho, H.J.: Locating Car License Plate Using Subregion Features. Journal of the KISS 21(6), 1149–1159 (1994)

    Google Scholar 

  13. Prewitt, J.M.S., Mendelsohn, M.L.: The analysis of cell images. Ann. N.Y. Acad. Sci., 1035–1053 (1966)

    Google Scholar 

  14. Lee, E.R., Kim, P.K., Kim, H.J.: Automatic Recognition of a Car License Plate Using Color Image Processing. In: IEEE International Conference on Image Processing, vol. 2, pp. 301–305 (1994)

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2005 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

About this paper

Cite this paper

Shi, X., Zhao, W., Shen, Y. (2005). Automatic License Plate Recognition System Based on Color Image Processing. In: Gervasi, O., et al. Computational Science and Its Applications – ICCSA 2005. ICCSA 2005. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 3483. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/11424925_121

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/11424925_121

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-25863-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-32309-9

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics