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ABSTRACT then to extract vehicle number from that image. Most of the
ANPR systems are based on common approaches like
Traffic control and vehicle owner identification has become artificial neural network (ANN) [5], [1],[6],[7][8], [9], [10],
major problem in every country. Sometimes it becomes Probabilistic neural network (PNN) [11], Optical Character
difficult to identify vehicle owner who violates traffic rules Recognition (OCR)[5], [12], [2], [13], [7], [14], Feature
and drives too fast. Therefore, it is not possible to catch and salient [15], MATLAB[16], Configurable method[17], Sliding
punish those kinds of people because the traffic personal concentrating window (SCW)[14],[8], BP neural network[18],
might not be able to retrieve vehicle number from the moving support vector machine(SVM)[19], inductive learning [20],
vehicle because of the speed of the vehicle. Therefore, there is region based [21], color segmentation [22], fuzzy based
a need to develop Automatic Number Plate Recognition algorithm [23], scale invariant feature transform (SIFT) [24],
(ANPR) system as a one of the solutions to this problem. trichromatic imaging, Least Square Method(LSM) [25],[26],
There are numerous ANPR systems available today. These online license plate matching based on weighted edit distance
systems are based on different methodologies but still it is [27] and color-discrete characteristics [28]. A case study of
really challenging task as some of the factors like high speed license plate reader (LPR) is well explained in [29]. Some
of vehicle, non-uniform vehicle number plate, language of authors focus on improving resolution of the low-resolution
vehicle number and different lighting conditions can affect a
lot in the overall recognition rate. Most of the systems work
under these limitations. In this paper, different approaches of
ANPR are discussed by considering image size, success rate
and processing time as parameters. Towards the end of this
paper, an extension to ANPR is suggested.
Keywords
Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR), Artificial
Neural Network (ANN), Character Segmentation Image
Segmentation, Number Plate, Optical Character Recognition
1. INTRODUCTION
1.1 Automatic Number Plate
Recognition (ANPR)
In last few years, ANPR or license plate recognition (LPR)
has been one of the useful approaches for vehicle surveillance.
It is can be applied at number of public places for fulfilling
some of the purposes like traffic safety enforcement,
automatic toll text collection [1], car park system [2] and
Automatic vehicle parking system [3]. ANPR algorithms are
generally divided in four steps: (1) Vehicle image capture (2)
Number plate detection (3) Character segmentation and (4) Fig.1. Conventional ANPR system
Character recognition. As it is shown in Fig.1, the first step
i.e. to capture image of vehicle looks very easy but it is quite .
exigent task as it is very difficult to capture image of moving
vehicle in real time in such a manner that none of the image by using technique called super resolution [30], [31].
component of vehicle especially the vehicle number plate Sometimes it becomes necessary to assess the quality of
should be missed. Presently number plate detection and ANPR system. In [9], a quality assessment of visual and
recognition processing time is less than 50 ms [4] in many ANPR is well explained. A comprehensive study of License
systems. The success of fourth step depends on how second plate recognition (LPR) is well presented in [4]. Throughout
and third step are able to locate vehicle number plate and this literature, number plate and license plate are used
separate each character. These systems follow different interchangeably. Details about each ANPR are discussed in
approaches to locate vehicle number plate from vehicle and section 2.
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1.2 Scope of this paper not connected curves. Different edge detection algorithm /
operators such as Canny, Canny-Deriche, Differential, Sobel,
As it is not possible to judge which approach is better, Prewitt and Roberts Cross are used for edge detection.
different papers, which are based on steps mentioned in Fig.1,
are surveyed and categorized based on the methodologies in 2.3 Hough Transform
each approach. For each approach whenever available
parameters like speed, accuracy, performance, image size and It is a feature extraction technique initially used for line
platform are reported. Commercial product survey is beyond detection. Later on it has been extended to find position of
the scope of this paper as sometimes these products claims arbitrary shape like circle or oval. The original algorithm was
more accuracy than actual for promotional purposes. generalized by D.H. Ballard [32].
Remainder of this paper is divided as follows: Section 2
contains survey of different techniques to detect number plate.
2.4 Blob detection
Character segmentation methods are reviewed in section 3 and Blob detection is used to detect points or regions that differ in
section 4 contains discussion about character recognition brightness or color as compared to surroundings. The main
methods. The paper concludes with the discussion of what is purpose of using this approach is to find complimentary
not implemented and what kind of research is possible in regions which are not detected by edge detection or corner
ANPR. detection algorithms. Some common blob detectors are
Laplacian of Gaussian (LoG), Difference of Gaussians (DoG),
2. NUMBER PLATE DETECTION Determinant of Hessian (DoH), maximally stable extremal
Most of the number plate detection algorithms fall in more regions and Principle curvature based region detector.
than one category based on different techniques. To detect
vehicle number plate following factors should be considered:
2.5 Connected Component Analysis
(CCA)
(1). Plate size: a plate can be of different size in a vehicle
image. CCA or blob extraction is an approach to uniquely label
subsets of connected components based on a given heuristic.
(2). Plate location: a plate can be located anywhere in the It scans binary image and labels pixel as per connectivity
vehicle. conditions of current pixel such as North-East, North, North-
(3). Plate background: A plate can have different background West and West of the current pixel (8-connectivity). 4-
colors based on vehicle type. For example a government connectivity is used for only north and west neighbour of
vehicle number plate might have different background than current pixel. The algorithm gives better performance and it is
other public vehicles. very useful for automated image analysis. This method can be
used in plate segmentation as well as character segmentation.
(4). Screw: A plate may have screw and that could be
considered as a character. 2.6 Mathematical morphology
A number plate can be extracted by using image segmentation Mathematical morphology is based on set theory, lattice
method. There are numerous image segmentation methods theory, topology, and random functions. It is commonly
available in various literatures. In most of the methods image applicable to digital image but can be used in other spatial
binarization is used. Some authors use Otsu’s method for structures also. Initially it was developed for processing
image binarization to convert color image to gray scale image. binary images and then extended for processing gray scale
Some plate segmentation algorithms are based on color functions and images. It contains basic operators such as
segmentation. A study of license plate location based on color Erosion, dilation, opening, closing.
segmentation is discussed in [22]. In the following sections
common number plate extraction methods are explained, 2.7 Related work in number plate
which is followed by detailed discussion of image detection
segmentation techniques adopted in various literature of
ANPR or LPR. The methods discussed in preceding sections are
common methods for plate detection. Apart from these
2.1 Image binarization methods, various literature discussed method for plate
detection. As most of the methods discussed in these
Image binarization is a process to convert an image to black literatures use more than one approach, it is not possible to do
and white. In this method, certain threshold is chosen to category wise discussion. Different number plate
classify certain pixels as black and certain pixels as white. But segmentation algorithms are discussed below.
the main problem is how to choose correct threshold value for
particular image. Sometimes it becomes very difficult or In [5], for faster detection of region of interest
impossible to select optimal threshold value. Adaptive (ROI) a technique called sliding concentric window (SCW) is
Thresholding can be used to overcome this problem. A developed. It is a two step method contains two concentric
threshold can be selected by user manually or it can be windows moving from upper left corner of the image. Then
selected by an algorithm automatically which is known as statistical measurements in both windows were calculated
automatic thresholding. based on the segmentation rule which says that if the ratio of
the mean or median in the two windows exceeds a threshold,
2.2 Edge detection which is set by the, then the central pixel of the windows is
considered to belong to an ROI. The two windows stop
Edge detection is fundamental method for feature detection or sliding after the whole image is scanned. The threshold value
feature extraction. In general case the result of applying edge can be decided based on trial and error basis. The connected
detection of algorithm is an object boundary with connected component analysis is also used to have overall success rate of
curves. It becomes very difficult to apply this method to 96%. The experiment was carried out on Pentium IV at 3.0
complex images as it might result with object boundary with
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GHz with 512-MB RAM and took 111ms of processing time images. It is a seven-step procedure to extract number plate
for number plate segmentation. without any background image from vehicle image.
Another SCW based system is presented in [8] for In [15] a feature salient method is used to extract
locating Korean number plate. After applying SCW on vehicle number plate by using salient features like shape,
vehicle image authors used HSI color model for color texture and color. The authors used Hough transform (HT) to
verification and then tilt was corrected by using least square detect vertical and horizontal lines from rectangular vehicle
fitting with perpendicular offsets (LSFPO). The distance number plate and then processed it by converting red, green,
between camera and vehicle varies from 3 to 7 meters. blue (RGB) to hue-intensity-saturation(HIS). Finally, the
number plate is segmented. This algorithm is executed on
A cascade framework was used in [33] for Pentium-IV 2.26-GHz PC with 1 GB RAM using MATLAB.
developing fast algorithm for real time vehicle number plate
detection. In this framework a compact frame detection An Improved bernsen algorithm is used in [19] for
module is used to segment number plate. This module license plate location. This algorithm is used for the
contains three steps: First - Generation of Plate Region conditions like uneven illumination and particularly for
Candidates which is used to reject non plate regions by using shadow removal. The authors used local Otsu, global Otsu,
gradient features. Second – Extraction of complex plate and differential local threshold binary methods for good
regions which contains three steps to identify plate region and accuracy. By using this algorithm, shadow was removed and
reject non plate regions. Third – plate verification is used to license plate was successfully detected, which was not
make sure that no non plate regions are extracted in preceding possible with the traditional bernsen algorithm. The
steps. The experiment was carried out on 3-GHz Intel Pentium experiment was carried out on Windows XP Operating system
4 personal computer. Intel Core 1.8 GHz central processing unit and 1.5 GB RAM.
The algorithm was developed using Visual C++.
To detect multi-style number plate a configurable
method is proposed in [17]. For detecting different style of To locate Chinese number plate Hui Wu and Bing
number plates, a user can configure the algorithm by changing Li [35] proposed a method to find horizontal and vertical
parameter value in the number plate detection algorithm. The difference to find exact rectangle with vehicle number. The
authors define four parameters mainly: Authors converted vehicle image into gray scale and then
applied automatic binarization using MATLAB. Any further
Plate rotation angle- to rotate number at certain angle detail regarding number plate detection algorithm is not
plate if it is skewed which is shown in fig. 2(a). mentioned in this paper. The authors claim to have average
Character line number – to determine whether recognition rate of 0.8s.
characters are spanned in more than one line or To extract license plate characters in Indian
column as shown in fig. 2(b). The algorithm works for condition Ch.Jaya Lakshmi et al. [16] proposed a novel
maximum three lines. approach which is based on texture characteristics and
Recognition models – to determine whether number wavelets [36]. The authors also used morphological operation
plate contains alphabets only, alphabets and digits or [37] for better performance in complicated background. Sobel
alphabet, digits and symbols. mask is used to detect vertical edges. The system was
implemented using MATLAB. A Sobel edge detector operator
Character formats – To classify the number plate is also used in [38].
characters based on their type. For example, Symbols
can be represented as S, Alphabets can be represented To detect license plate from CCTV footage,
as A and digits can be represented as D. So the number M.S.Sarfraz et al.[39] proposed a novel approach for efficient
in fig.2, can be represented as AADAADDDD. localization of license plates in video sequence and the use of
a revised version of an existing technique for tracking and
recognition. The authors proposed a novel solution for
adjusting varying camera distance and diverse lighting
conditions. License plate detection is a four step procedure
including finding contours and connected components,
selection of rectangle region based on size and aspect ratio,
initial learning for adaptive camera distance/height,
localization based on histogram, gradient processing, and
nearest mean classifier. After processing these steps final
detection result is forwarded for tracking.
In [6], canny edge detector operator was applied
(a) Skewed image (b) Number plate with lines to find out the transition points. As per H.Erdinc Kocer et al a
license plate contains white background and black character
normally. The Canny edge detector uses a filter, which is then
Fig. 2. Vehicle number plate with first two parameters based on Gaussian smoothing’s first derivative to eliminate
as per [17] the noise. Then in the next step, the edge strength is calculated
by considering the gradient of the image. The canny edge
detector operator used 3 X 3 matrix to accomplish this task.
The algorithm was executed on Pentium IV 3.0GHz. Based on this information transition points region is
determined. The edge map is used to find transition points
To locate Indian number plate, a feature based
between black and white colors. The further technical details
number plate localization is proposed in [34]. The authors use
of this algorithm are not mentioned. The vehicle images were
Otsu’s method to convert gray scale images into binary
captures from CCD camera.
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For detecting number plates of different countries processing time including acquisition, location and OCR is
Ankush Roy et al. [7] presented improved segmentation about 200ms.
algorithm. The number plate segmentation algorithm is a four
step procedure including median filtering, adaptive In [43], license plate character extraction for video
thresholding, component labeling and region growing and is discussed. As per Cui, Yuntao, localization of license plate
segmentation and normalization to remove noise, for means finding text in the images. The authors assumed license
binarization of image, to label the pixel according to color plate with light background and characters with dark back
value and to segment the plate of 15 X 15 pixel size. The ground. To do localization, spatial variance method is used for
authors used Otsu’s method for image binarization in the finding text regions and non text regions as high variance
adaptive thresholding process. The overall success rate of means text region and low variance means non text region.
system is mentioned but success rate of number plate In [44] DT-CNN and classifier combining based
detection rate is not mentioned in this paper. VIPUR system (Vehicle Identification on PUblic Roads) is
In [14], global edge features and local Haar-like described. The system does automatic recognition of license
features are proposed for real-time traffic video. License plate plate for toll collection. The input is 8 bit gray scale image. As
detection is accomplished by moving a scanning window per Ter Brugge, M.H. et al. a license plate is rectangle area
around the vehicle image. The scanning windows is containing number of dark characters. To determine license
categorized a license plate region and non license plate region plate region, greyness and texture features are applied to each
based on the pre-defined classifier. In the training phase, six pixel. To extract greyness feature DT-CNN is used which
cascade classifier layers are constructed for future processing. mentions that a 1 value indicates gray value and -1 indicates
In the testing phase, local Haar-like features and global color of pixel is outside of the gray value. By using gray value
features are extracted. Haar-like features are the digital image a frequency table is prepared. Based on this table a value
features generally used for object segmentation. These range is defined. The authors mentioned that gray value of
features are generally collection of functions to find number most of the license plate characters ranges from 0.1 to 0.57.
of rectangles covering adjacent image regions. Global features For texture feature a 3 X 3 Sobel operator is applied to each
include edge density and edge density variable. These features pixel to construct histogram. Most of the license plate pixels
are calculated by using fix size of sample image i.e. 48 X 16 have absolute Sobel value more than 0.73. Then by using a
which is scaled in training phase. The experiment was carried two layer DT-CNN a 3 X 3 matrix is prepared, which is
out on a PC with Pentium 2.8 GHz CPU. The average remitted to the next step for further processing. Next step is
processing time for segmentation was 0.204s. Another edge dimension based objection selection for locating license plate
based number plate segmentation algorithm is presented in regions. In this method non plate regions are removed by
[38]. considering weak size constraints minimum height, maximum
height, minimum width and maximum width. This is done by
A weighted statistical method is applied in [18]. four DT-CNNs. Finally one union and two subtraction
Before processing further, authors converted 24 bit color operators are used for getting segmented license plate region.
image into gray scale image. In the weighted statistical
method, a 2D image matrix of N rows and M columns is In [45], pre-processing, segmentation and
prepared. Then weighting operation is applied to the modified verification are used for number plate localization of car. In
image matrix prepared after adding weights. As per Zhigang the pre-processing the global Thresholding is used to map
Zhanga et al. standard license plate length and breadth color intensity into gray scale. In plate’s vertical boundary
proportion is 3.14:1. More implementation details regarding detection stage, Robert’s edge operator is used to emphasize
this method are not mentioned in this paper. Similar method is vertical edges. The authors assumed two points: plates are
proposed in [40]. oriented horizontally and there is a significant intensity
difference between plate background and character
To detect license plate in varying illumination foreground. A horizontally oriented rank-filter of size M × N
conditions a novel approach is presented in [41]. A pixels is moved alongside with the image. Then by using
binarization method is used as pre-processing step for plate vertical projection is used to detect plate’s vertical boundaries.
segmentation. In this approach, the author divided small Sometimes the plate is skewed as shown in fig. 2(a). To
window region in the image and applied dynamic thresholding eliminate skew position in a number plate a Randon
method to each region. As per Naito, T et al. [41], this method Transform (RT) function is used in conjunction with Dirac’s
is very robust for a local change in brightness of an image. delta function. Horizontal boundaries are detected by using
Then binarized image is labelled and segmented as per the series of morphological erosions with horizontally oriented
algorithm mentioned in this paper. The algorithm works for structured elements are applied. Finally two step verification
Japanese number plate but it is not clear that whether it can be procedure is used. In the first step, the global binarization is
applied for other countries. The experiment environment and done via Otsu’s algorithm. The authors assumed dark
processing time are not mentioned. characters with light background for this purpose. In the
second step, the authors compared binarization threshold with
In [42] a novel approach based on vector the plate intensity median. As per Shapiro et al. probability of
quantization (VQ) is discussed. As per Zunino, R, most detecting number plate is higher when the intensity median of
approaches focus on candidate regions like edge, contract etc the plate zone is greater than the threshold. After passing all
in segmentation process. It might segment non plate regions the test number plate is approved successfully. If any of the
rather than plate regions. So VQ based approach is able to tests fails then current plate region is rejected and the system
solve this problem. As per this paper a license plate is goes back to the segmentation stage to search for the another
assumed be a rectangular box and each rectangle regions are plate region. After maximum number of iteration if system is
considered as stripes. By using four-step codebook algorithm, not able to find plate region then an algorithm is stopped and
a license plate is segmented. The system was developed error message is issued. The average processing time for
under C++ language with Intel Pentium board running at 200 single image was 0.4s on 3 GHz Pentium processor with a
MHz having Windows NT operating system. The overall varying distance of 3 to 10m from camera to vehicle.
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International Journal of Computer Applications (0975 – 8887)
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A dynamic programming based plate Applying previous steps to all characters contained in the
segmentation algorithm is proposed in [46]. The authors number plate being processed and Recognize number plate by
discussed problem of plate segmentation and provided bringing all characters used together.
different approach to solve it. Similar approach is proposed in
[47]. The authors used multiple thresholds method to extract In [23], fuzzy-based algorithm is applied. To extract
candidate regions. The authors used segmented blobs to license plate region a four step method is implemented. In the
provide geometric constraints for numeric characters of a first step noise is eliminated from the input image. Edge
number plate. So it is not required use any image features detection is used in second step of find rectangle area of
likes edges, colors, or lines. The experiments were carried out candidate region. In the third step, based on size, histogram
on on a desktop computer equipped with an Intel Core-Duo and other information invalid rectangle areas are discarded. In
3.0GHz CPU. The authors used Adaboost [48] algorithm with the last step geometric rectification is used to obtain license
OpenCV to train. It took 0.5s to detect and locate number plate candidate region. As these steps need some addition
plate. The system is mainly used to detect Korean number processing, authors used fuzzy-based algorithm containing
plate characters. several steps to extract license plate with more accuracy. The
system was developed on TI DM642 600 MHz/32 MB RAM
In [49], a fuzzy discipline based approach is with C language under CCStudio V3.1 environment. The
proposed for number plate segmentation. In license plate overall average processing time was ~418.81ms.
locating module, the authors considered number plates having
colors white, black, red and green. The edge detector Number plate can be detected based on color, edge
algorithm is sensitive to only black-white, red-white and and other features. An edge-based color-aided method is
green-white edges. The transformation from RGB to HIS is discussed in [53]. For image enhancement intensity variance
used based on the formula given in this paper. After that and edge density methods are proposed. After applying
different edge maps are formed, a two stage fuzzy aggregator intensity variance and edge density methods, license plate
is used to integrate these maps. After that plate candidates are detection process is executed. The plate detection involves
determined based on the integrated map. By using color edge several steps. Vertical edge density estimation is used to avoid
detector, fuzzy maps and fuzzy aggregation the candidate missing plate edges due to bad lighting. In the next step a
region is located. Before remitting number plate for further Gaussian mixture is used to emphasize the constancy of
processing binarization, connected component and noise intensity values within plate region, along horizontal
removal is applied to it. The algorithm was executed on direction. Then 80% threshold value is used to detect
Pentium - IV 1.6 GHz PC. It took around 0.4s to locate all the candidate region. Finally morphological processing and color
possible license plate regions. analysis of candidate regions are used to segment license
plate. The system was developed using MATLAB on Pentium
A novel future fusion approach is proposed in 3.0 GHz. The overall average processing time was ~1.36s.
[50]. The authors converted color image into gray scale by
using multiple thresholds and Otsu’s threshold. The authors A probabilistic neural network (PNN) based
used different approaches such as deterministic approach: approach is presented in [11]. The PNN algorithm works on
pixel voting, probabilistic approach: global binarization, gray scale image. Bottom-Hat filtering is used to enhance the
probabilistic approach: local binarization and combination potential plate regions. To separate the object of interest from
among these approaches to locate the license plate. background a thresholding is employed for binarization of the
gray level image. Because of varying lighting conditions,
In [51], to detect license plate candidate region brightness levels may vary and some adaptation is necessary.
verification process is proposed. It consists of verification of To perform it Otsu's Thresholding technique is used as it is
lower part, upper part and vertical border. adaptive in nature. Each segment of the binary image is
labelled according to color of each segment to enable
In [52], a cognitive and video-based approach is classification. The plate extraction is done calculating the
proposed. As per Thome et al. license plate detection Column Sum Vector (CSV) and its local minima. The
approach falls in two groups: appearance based and gradient algorithm was executed on Intel® Core™2 Duo Processor
methods. The appearance based approach depends on color or CPU P8400 (2.26GHz, 2267 MHz). The plate recognition
texture feature to separate license plate from background. processing time was 0.1s.
Gradient based approach is used for high contrast license
plate. The authors used gradient-based strategy for license In [24], a robust and reliable SIFT based method is
plate detection. Each frame is thus processed to localize areas used to describe local feature of a number plate. As per
with a high vertical gradient density. A vertical Sobel mark Morteza Zahedi et al., the set of features extracted from the
filter is applied after contour enhancement. The pixels are training images must be robust to changes in image scale,
identified as text or non text area by using final labelling. noise and illumination in order to perform reliable
Then connected component analysis (CCA) is applied on recognition. The more details regarding license plate
binary map to extract set of N candidates for license plate. recognition are not mentioned in this paper.
The experiment was carried out on Pentium processor with
2.66GHz with 512MB RAM. The software was developed A MATLAB based system is proposed in [54]. The
using Microsoft Visual studio 2005 without code authors used pre-processing step to convert color image into
optimization. Processing time for license plate detection was binary based on the equation presented in this paper. Then by
15ms. using adaptive median filter, vehicle images gray stretch and
vehicle images gradient sharpening a license plate is
An inductive learning RULE-3 based system is extracted.
proposed in [20]. RULE-3 is a simple algorithm containing
several steps for extracting objects having certain attributes. In [28], a trichromatic imaging and color-discrete
Recognition of number plate contains four steps such as characteristic approach is used to locate license plate. As per
finding edges which are contained in letter, Xing Yang et al. number plates from 105 countries are
Recognizing the letter using an extracted set of rules, composed of 11 combinations such as : (1) cyan–black; (2)
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Volume 69– No.9, May 2013
cyan–white; (3) black–red; (4) black–white; (5) blue–white; network [62], two stage self organizing network [63],
(6) white–red; (7) white–green; (8) yellow–black; (9) yellow– adaptive local thresholds [64], vectorial scale-based fuzzy-
blue; (10) yellow–green; and (11) yellow–red. Based on this connected image segmentation [65], mixed deterministic and
information, authors divided six groups of RGB components. Monte-Carlo [66], evaluation matrix based image
Then authors derived several trichromatic functions and a segmentation [67], neutrosophic set and wavelet
binarized image is obtained. In the next step, de-noising and transformation [36], non linear distance matrix [68], shape-
searching are used to locate license plate finally. The system prior based image segmentation with intensity-based image
was Intel Pentium 4, 2.4 GHz, and 1-GB memory. The overall registration [69] and least squares support vector machine
average processing time was 57ms. (LS-SVM) [70] can be useful for object detection. In [71],
survey of different image segmentation techniques is
Image segmentation techniques such as color discussed. The authors focused on different unsupervised
texture based [55], coarse-to-fine strategy[56], wrapper based methods. Some of these methods such as [56], [36] and [70]
approach[57], content based image retrieval [58], dynamic can be applicable to number plate detection. The method
region merging [59], Dual Multiscale Morphological discussed in [56] can be useful to detect multiple objects from
Reconstructions and Retrieval Applications [37], background the image. It is more suitable for segmentation of multiple
recognition and perceptual organization [60], niching particle vehicle number plates from the traffic image. The work
swarm optimization [61], constraint satisfaction neural
Bold indicates overall success rate is mentioned but number plate detection rate is not mentioned
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Volume 69– No.9, May 2013
presented in [46], [72] lack description and clarity regarding in this paper. Same process is repeated for horizontal direction
technical details of number plate segmentation algorithm, A by taking width as a threshold.
Comparative study of image segmentation techniques and
object matching using segmentation is well explained in CCA is very useful technique for processing binary
[73]. image. In [19] horizontal and vertical correction and image
enhancement are performed as pre-processing steps for
2.8 Discussion character segmentation. CCA is used in horizontal and
vertical correction. After performing these steps plate is
In most of the literatures, the number plate segmentation transformed to black characters / white background and then
algorithms work in restricted conditions like illumination, resized to 100 X 200. Then all the characters are segmented to
number plate shape (generally rectangle), size, distance from the unique size of 32 X 32. In [44] image binarization and
camera and vehicle and color. It is to be noted that only few connected component labelling methods are used
algorithms work for real-time video image of a number plate
[33], [30],[39], [51], [61], otherwise static image of number In [16], three matrices are used to storing plate
plate is remitted to ANPR for further processing. In Table 1, location and binarization, number of columns in BW and
different plate segmentation detection success rate against number of row in BW respectively. Then after precise
plate resolution of different ANPR is depicted. The systems in location of top and bottom boundaries are detected, which are
which image size and success rate of number plate detections followed by vertical projection and Thresholding to segment
are not mentioned, are not included in Table 1. It is observed the characters.
that plate segmentation processing time is ranged from 15ms H.Erdinc Kocer [6] used contrast extension,
to 1360ms. The lower processing time of 15ms was reported median filtering and blob coloring methods for character
in [52] while higher processing time of 1360 was reported in segmentation. Contrast extension is used to make image
[53]. It is evident that number plate detection rate affects sharp. As per H.Erdinc Kocer the histogram equalization is a
character segmentation and character recognition which in popular technique to improve the appearance of a poor
turn affects overall recognition rate. Based on the study of contrasted image. In median filtering unwanted noisy regions
several literature presented in this section, it can be concluded are removed. Blob coloring method is applied to binary image
that Image binarization, Sliding concentric window (SCW), to detect closed and contact less regions. In this method, an L
Sobel operator, Canny-edge operator, Connected component shaped template is used to scan image from left to right and
analysis(CCA), Hough Transform (HT), Fuzzy discipline top to bottom. This scanning process is used to determine the
based approach, Probabilistic neural network (PNN) and independent regions by obtaining the connections into four
trichromatic imaging with color-discrete characteristic directions from zero valued background. The four directional
approach can provide promising result for number plate blob coloring algorithm is applied to the binary coding license
segmentation. plate image for extracting the characters. At the end of this
In order to proceed with character recognition, process the numbers are segmented in the size of 28 X 35 and
further image processing in the form of character letters are segmented in the size of 30 X 40. Another
segmentation is required, which is discussed in the next algorithm based on blob detection is proposed in [14]. The
section. character segmentation process consists of character height
estimation, character width estimation and blob extraction.
3. CHARACTER SEGMENTATION Character height estimation contains three parts: color reverse,
vertical edge detection and horizontal projection histogram.
After locating number plate, characters are examined for the Color reverse is used to make color of license plate characters
further process. As with the plate segmentation there are as black by using statistical analysis of edges. Vertical edge
various methods available for conducting character detection is used to detect finalized number plate. Sobel mask
segmentation. As many methods fall in more than one and image binarization algorithms are used to perform it.
category it is not possible to do category wise discussion. In Horizontal projection histogram is used to find top and bottom
this section common related work in this area followed by boundary of a character. The distance between upper and
discussion is discussed. Some methods such as image lower boundaries is considered as height of a character.
binarization and CCA are already discussed in Section 2 can Character width estimation contains: image binarization and
also be applied to character segmentation. vertical projection histogram. Image binarization is used to
make color as black and white. Vertical projection is used to
3.1 Related work in character find gaps between characters. The process is similar as
segmentation horizontal projection. Blob extraction is a two- step procedure
including Blob detection and blob checking algorithms. The
In [5], the candidate region is cropped in 78 X 228 blob detection algorithm is an extension of CCA. Blob
pixels by using bicubic interpolation and then subjected to checking is used to remove non blob characters from the
SCW for segmentation. The authors used threshold value of segmented characters.
0.7 for optimization of the results. After the character
segmentation process, each character is resized to pixel size of In [45], character clipper is used to separate
9 X 12. character in rectangle box. Then by using feature extractor,
classifier, post processor and training phases each character is
Prathamesh Kulkarni et al. [34] conclude that blob segmented.
coloring and peak-to-valley methods are not suitable for
Indian number plate. The authors proposed image scissoring In [25], an improved projection method (IPM) is
algorithm in which a number plate is vertically scanned and proposed. The authors mentioned a three step procedure for
scissored at the row where there is no white pixel and this character segmentation. In first step horizontal, vertical and
information is stored in the matrix. In case of more than one compound tilts are corrected. Then in second steps auxiliary
matrix, a false matrix is discarded based on the formula given lines are drawn in between first and last character to detected
connected boundaries. In the final step the characters are
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International Journal of Computer Applications (0975 – 8887)
Volume 69– No.9, May 2013
segmented after removing noise. The experiment was carried recognition rate. In [15], several features and extracted and
out using MATLAB 6.5 using VC++ 6.0. salient is computed based on training characters. A linear
normalization algorithm is used to adjust all characters with
As per Thome, Nicolas et al. [52] connected component uniform size. The recognition rate of 95.7% is achieved
labelling is accurate but might result in failure because of among 1176 images. An SVM based approach is used for
single mis-labelled pixel error. The authors also concluded feature extraction of Chinese, Kana and English, Numeric
that histogram projection is more robust but it is less accurate. characters. The authors achieved success rate of 99.5%,
They used connected component labelling method to 98.6%, and 97.8% for numerals, Kana, and address
preliminary set of contours. recognition respectively. A template based approach is
Vertical and horizontal histogram methods are used in [11]. proposed in [16]. The authors used low-resolution template
To determine the boundaries of characters, column sum matching method to work with lower resolution image such as
vectors are used. Based on the algorithm two adjacent 4 X 8. The authors used similarity function to measure
characters are separated in two. similarity between patterns.
.
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International Journal of Computer Applications (0975 – 8887)
Volume 69– No.9, May 2013
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International Journal of Computer Applications (0975 – 8887)
Volume 69– No.9, May 2013
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