Skip to main content
Springer Nature Link
Log in

An efficient method for extraction and recognition of bangla characters from vehicle license plates

  • Published:
Multimedia Tools and Applications Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Recognition of characters from vehicle license plate plays a vital role in vehicle tracking, controlling, and maintaining traffic on the roads and high ways. This paper presents an automatic system to detect plate area and recognize characters. The research is carried out on Bangladeshi vehicle license plates because this is a demandable research area in the present age. The method has been implemented using the five consecutive steps such as license plate detection, extraction, character localization, extraction of characters, and recognition of extracted characters. We have introduced an algorithm to detect the Region of Interest (ROI) from the input image. It is performed by applying morphological operation and histogram analysis of vertical and horizontal projection profiles. A dynamic threshold is used to filter out both horizontal and vertical histogram values and ROI is extracted from the license plate image using different geometric properties such as area, bounding box, and aspect ratio. Character segmentation is performed by applying the method of connected component analysis and bounding box technology. Finally, character recognition is carried out using Support Vector Machine (SVM) classifier where extracted Histogram of Oriented Gradient (HOG) features are used as input. The proposed algorithm is applied to 630 images of license plates of different categories of vehicles and achieved 91% accuracy in the extraction of ROI and 94.6% accuracy in the extraction of characters. We have also achieved 100% accuracy in recognition of Bangla characters from a total of 4725 Bangla characters extracted from 630 images of license plates.

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

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Subscribe and save

Springer+ Basic
$34.99 /Month
  • Get 10 units per month
  • Download Article/Chapter or eBook
  • 1 Unit = 1 Article or 1 Chapter
  • Cancel anytime
Subscribe now

Buy Now

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5
Fig. 6
Fig. 7
Fig. 8
Fig. 9
Fig. 10
Fig. 11
Fig. 12
Fig. 13
Fig. 14
Fig. 15
Fig. 16
Fig. 17
Fig. 18
Fig. 19
Fig. 20
Fig. 21
Fig. 22
Fig. 23

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. Amin MR, Mohammad N, Bikas MAN (2014) An automatic number plate recognition of Bangladeshi vehicles. Int J Comput Appl 93:15

    Google Scholar 

  2. Baten RA, Omair Z, Sikder U (2014) Bangla license plate reader for metropolitan cities of Bangladesh using template matching. In: 2014 International Conference on Electrical and Computer Engineering (ICECE). IEEE, pp 776–779

  3. Cao G, Chen J, Jiang J (2003) An adaptive approach to vehicle license plate localization. Proceedings of 29th Industrial Electronics Conference, pp 1786–1791

  4. Chandra S, Nowshad MA, Islam MJ, Jannat ME (2017) An automated system to detect and recognize vehicle license plates of Bangladesh, 20th International Conference of Computer and Information Technology (ICCIT)

  5. Chang S-L, Chen L-S, Chung Y-C, Chen S-W (2004) Automatic license plate recognition. IEEE Trans Intell Transp Syst 5(1):42–53

    Article  Google Scholar 

  6. Cortes C, Vapnik V (1995) Support vector networks. Mach Learn 20(3):273–297

    MATH  Google Scholar 

  7. Dalal N, Triggs B (2005) Histograms of oriented gradients for human detection. In: IEEE Computer Society Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, vol 1. IEEE, pp 886–893

  8. Deb K, Chae H-U, Jo K-H (2008) Parallelogram and histogram-based vehicle license plate detection. Proceedings of the IEEE ICSMA, pp 349–353

  9. Deb K, Hossen MK, Khan MI, Alam MR (2012) Bangladeshi vehicle license plate detection method based on HSI color model and geometrical properties. Proceedings of 7th International Forum on Strategic Technology (IFOST) 1:686–690

    Google Scholar 

  10. Deb K, Kang S-J, Jo K-H (2009) Statistical characteristics in the HSI color model and position histogram-based vehicle license plate detection. Intel Serv Robot 2:173–186. Springer

    Article  Google Scholar 

  11. Gao Q, Wang X, Xie G (2007) License plate recognition based on prior knowledge. Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Automation and Logistics, pp 2964–2968

  12. Ghosh AK, Sharma SK, Islam MN, Biswas S, Akter S (2011) Automatic license plate recognition (ALPR) for Bangladeshi vehicles, Global Journal of Computer Science and Technology

  13. Hsieh JW, Yu SH, Chen YS (2002) Morphology-based license plate detection from complex scenes. Proceedings of 16th International Conference on Pattern Recognition, vol 03

  14. Islam R, Islam MR, Talukder KH (2016) An Approach To Extract Text Regions From Scene Image, IEEE International Conference on Computing, Analytics and Security Trends (CAST) College of Engineering Pune, India, pp 138–143

  15. Kim K-I, Jung K, Kim J-H (2002) Color Texture-Based Object detection: An application to License Plate Localization. In: Lee S-W, Verri A (eds) Lecture Notes on Computer Science, vol 2388. Springer, New York, pp 293–309

  16. Kim S, Kim D, Ryu Y, Kim G (2002) A robust license plate extraction method under complex image conditions. Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Object recognition supported by user interaction for service robots, pp 216–219, vol 3

  17. Mashuk MS, Majid MA, Basher N, Rahman TR (2010) Automatic detection of bangla characters in Bangladeshi car registration plates. In: Second International Conference on Computational Intelligence, modelling and Simulation (CIMSim). IEEE, pp 166–171

  18. Moustafa AA, Jaradat M-IRM (2015) A new approach for license plate detection and localization: Between reality and applicability. Int Bus Res 8(11):13

    Article  Google Scholar 

  19. Pizer SM, Amburn EP, Austin JD, Cromartie R, Geselowitz A, Greer T, Ter B, Romeny H, Zimmerman JB, Zuiderveld K (1987) Adaptive histogram equalization and its variations. Comput Vis Graph Image Process 39(3):355–368

    Article  Google Scholar 

  20. Rabee A, Barhumi I (2014) License plate detection and recognition in complex scenes using mathematical morphology and support vector machines. In: 2014 International Conference on Systems, Signals and Image Processing (IWSSIP), IEEE, pp 59–62

  21. Roy AC, Hossain MK, Nag D (2016) License Plate Detection and Character Recognition for Commercial Vehicles based on morphological approach and Template Matching, Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Electrical Engineering and Information Communication Technology (ICEEICT), Dhaka, pp 1–6

  22. Saha S, Basu S, Nasipuri M, Basu DK (2009) ‘License plate localization from vehicle images: An edge-based multi-stage approach’. Int J Recent Trends Eng 1(1):284–288

    Google Scholar 

  23. Sarfraz M, Ahmed MJ, Ghazi SA (2003) Saudi arabian license plate recognition system. International Conference on Geometric Modeling and Graphics’, pp 36–41

  24. Uddin MA, Joolee JB, Chowdhury SA (2016) Bangladeshi vehicle digital license plate recognition for metropolitan cities using support vector machine. In: Proceedings International Conference on Advanced Information and Communication Technology

  25. https://www.bikebd.com/vehicle-digital-number-plate-in-bangladesh [accessed on August 2018]

  26. http://www.worldlicenseplates.com/world/ASBang.htm [Accessed in August 2018]

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Computer Science and Engineering Discipline, Khulna University, Khulna, 9208, Bangladesh

    Rashedul Islam, Md Rafiqul Islam & Kamrul Hasan Talukder

Authors
  1. Rashedul Islam
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar

  2. Md Rafiqul Islam
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar

  3. Kamrul Hasan Talukder
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Rashedul Islam.

Additional information

Publisher’s note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Islam, R., Islam, M.R. & Talukder, K.H. An efficient method for extraction and recognition of bangla characters from vehicle license plates. Multimed Tools Appl 79, 20107–20132 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-020-08629-8

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Revised:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-020-08629-8

Keywords