• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SC
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• v.45 no.3
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• pp.12-19
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• 2008

Detection of a number plate consists of three stages; division of a number plate, extraction of each character from the plate, recognition of the characters. Among of these three states, division stage of a number plate is the most important part and also the most time-consuming state. This paper suggests an effective region extraction method of a number plate for various images obtained from unmanned inspection systems of illegal parking violation, especially when we have to consider the diverse surrounding environments of roads. Our approaching method detects each region by investigating the characteristics in changes of brightness and intensity between the background part and character part, and the characteristics on character parts such as the sizes, heights, widths, and distance in between two characters. The method also divides a number plate into different types of the plate. This research can solve the number plate region detection failure problems caused by plate edge damages not only for Korean domestic number plates but also for new European style number plates. The method also reduces the time consumption by processing the detection in real-time, therefore, it can be used as a practical solution.