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http://dx.doi.org/10.7840/kics.2013.38C.12.1114

Novel License Plate Detection Method Based on Heuristic Energy  

Sarker, Md.Mostafa Kamal (Division of Electronic and Information Eng., Chonbuk National University)
Yoon, Sook (Dept. of Multimedia Engineering, Mokpo National University)
Lee, Jaehwan (Division of Electronic and Information Eng., Chonbuk National University)
Park, Dong Sun (Division of Electronic and Information Eng., Chonbuk National University)
Publication Information
The Journal of Korean Institute of Communications and Information Sciences / v.38C, no.12, 2013 , pp. 1114-1125 More about this Journal
Abstract
License Plate Detection (LPD) is a key component in automatic license plate recognition system. Despite the success of License Plate Recognition (LPR) methods in the past decades, the problem is quite a challenge due to the diversity of plate formats and multiform outdoor illumination conditions during image acquisition. This paper aims at automatical detection of car license plates via image processing techniques. In this paper, we proposed a real-time and robust method for license plate detection using Heuristic Energy Map(HEM). In the vehicle image, the region of license plate contains many components or edges. We obtain the edge energy values of an image by using the box filter and search for the license plate region with high energy values. Using this energy value information or Heuristic Energy Map(HEM), we can easily detect the license plate region from vehicle image with a very high possibilities. The proposed method consists two main steps: Region of Interest (ROI) Detection and License Plate Detection. This method has better performance in speed and accuracy than the most of existing methods used for license plate detection. The proposed method can detect a license plate within 130 milliseconds and its detection rate is 99.2% on a 3.10-GHz Intel Core i3-2100(with 4.00 GB of RAM) personal computer.
Keywords
Automatic number plate recognition; Region of interest; Connected component analysis; Box filter; Heuristic energy map;
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