• Journal of the Korea Society of Computer and Information
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.53-60
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• 2011

This paper proposes fusion methods of license plate detection and super-resolution for improving license plate recognition in low-resolution images. In the proposed method, we apply the license plate detection based on local structure pattern feature and the sequential super-resolution based on Kalman filter. The proposed fusion methods are divided into two according to whether the license plate is detected or not in the input image : (i) performing license plate detection after restoring whole image through super resolution, and (ii) restoring only the detected region through super-resolution after detecting the license plate. We demonstrated effectiveness of the proposed methods in various environments.

• Journal of IKEEE
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.1188-1194
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• 2018

This paper proposes an image enhancement-based license plate detection algorithm to improve the overall performance of system. Non-uniform illumination conditions have huge impact on overall plate detection system accuracy. In this paper, we propose an algorithm for color image enhancement-based license plate detection for improving accuracy of images degraded by excessively strong and low sunlight. Firstly, the image is enhanced by Multi-Scale Retinex algorithm. Secondly, a plate detection method is employed to take advantage of geometric properties of connected components, which can significantly reduce the undesired plate regions. Finally, intersection over union method is applied for detecting the accurate location of number plate. Experimental results show that the proposed method significantly improves the accuracy of plate detection system.

• Journal of Information Technology Services
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• v.20 no.6
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• pp.97-105
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• 2021

Recently, with the development of IT technology, unmanned systems are being introduced in many industrial fields, and one of the most important factors for introducing unmanned systems in the automobile field is vehicle licence plate recognition(VLPR). The existing VLPR algorithms are configured to use image processing for a specific type of license plate to divide individual areas of a character within the plate to recognize each character. However, as the number of Korean vehicle license plates increases, the law is amended, there are old-fashioned license plates, new license plates, and different types of plates are used for each type of vehicle. Therefore, it is necessary to update the VLPR system every time, which incurs costs. In this paper, we use an object detection algorithm to detect character regardless of the format of the vehicle license plate, and apply a handwritten Hangul recognition(HHR) algorithm to enhance the recognition accuracy of a single Hangul character, which is called a Hangul unit. Since Hangul unit is recognized by combining initial consonant, medial vowel and final consonant, so it is possible to use other Hangul units in addition to the 40 Hangul units used for the Korean vehicle license plate.

• ETRI Journal
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• v.42 no.3
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• pp.411-419
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• 2020

In real-world intelligent transportation systems, accuracy in vehicle license plate detection and recognition is considered quite critical. Many algorithms have been proposed for still images, but their accuracy on actual videos is not satisfactory. This stems from several problematic conditions in videos, such as vehicle motion blur, variety in viewpoints, outliers, and the lack of publicly available video datasets. In this study, we focus on these challenges and propose a license plate detection and recognition scheme for videos based on a temporal matching prior network. Specifically, to improve the robustness of detection and recognition accuracy in the presence of motion blur and outliers, forward and bidirectional matching priors between consecutive frames are properly combined with layer structures specifically designed for plate detection. We also built our own video dataset for the deep training of the proposed network. During network training, we perform data augmentation based on image rotation to increase robustness regarding the various viewpoints in videos.

• Journal of Digital Convergence
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.239-245
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• 2017

For privacy protection, we propose a vehicle license plate region detection method in road view image served from portal site. Because vehicle license plate regions in road view images have different feature depending on distance, long distance vehicle license plate regions are not detected by feature of low resolution. Therefore, we suggest a method to detect short distance vehicle license plate regions by edge feature and long distance vehicle license plate regions using MSER feature. And then, we select candidate region of vehicle license plate region from detected region of each method, because the number of the vehicle license plate has a structural feature, we used it to detect the final vehicle license plate region. As the experiment result, we got a recall rate of 93%, precision rate of 75%, and F-Score rate of 80% in various road view images.

• Journal of Korea Society of Digital Industry and Information Management
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.1-11
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• 2022

Recently, research on license plate recognition, which is a core technology of an intelligent transportation system(ITS), is being actively conducted. In this paper, we propose a method to extract numbers and characters from low-quality license plate images by applying the YOLOv4 algorithm. YOLOv4 is a one-stage object detection method using convolution neural network including BACKBONE, NECK, and HEAD parts. It is a method of detecting objects in real time rather than the previous two-stage object detection method such as the faster R-CNN. In this paper, we studied a method to directly extract number and character regions from low-quality license plate images without additional edge detection and image segmentation processes. In order to evaluate the performance of the proposed method we experimented with 500 license plate images. In this experiment, 350 images were used for training and the remaining 150 images were used for the testing process. Computer simulations show that the mean average precision of detecting number and character regions on vehicle license plates was about 93.8%.

• Smart Media Journal
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• v.5 no.1
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• pp.15-23
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• 2016

This paper proposes an effective algorithm of Korean license plate recognition. By applying Haar-like feature and Canny edge detection on a captured vehicle image, it is possible to find a connected rectangular, which is a strong candidate for license plate. The color information of license plate separates plates into white and green. Then, OTSU binary image processing and foreground neighbor pixel propagation algorithm CLNF will be applied to each license plates to reduce noise except numbers and letters. Finally, through labeling, numbers and letters will be extracted from the license plate. Letter and number regions, separated from the plate, pass through mesh method and thinning process for extracting feature vectors by X-Y projection method. The extracted feature vectors are classified using neural networks trained by backpropagation algorithm to execute final recognition process. The experiment results show that the proposed license plate recognition algorithm works effectively.

• International journal of advanced smart convergence
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.113-120
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• 2020

Recently, the license plate OCR system has been commercialized in a variety of fields and preferred utilizing low-cost embedded systems using only cameras. This system has a high recognition rate of about 98% or more for the environments such as parking lots where non-vehicle is restricted; however, the environments where non-vehicle objects are not restricted, the recognition rate is about 50% to 70%. This low performance is due to the changes in the environment by non-vehicle objects in real-time situations that occur anomaly data which is similar to the license plates. In this paper, we implement the appropriate anomaly detection based on semi-supervised learning for the license plate OCR system in the real-time environment where the appearance of non-vehicle objects is not restricted. In the experiment, we compare systems which anomaly detection is not implemented in the preceding research with the proposed system in this paper. As a result, the systems which anomaly detection is not implemented had a recognition rate of 77%; however, the systems with the semi-supervised learning based on anomaly detection had 88% of recognition rate. Using the techniques of anomaly detection based on the semi-supervised learning was effective in detecting anomaly data and it was helpful to improve the recognition rate of real-time situations.

• KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems (TIIS)
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• v.13 no.5
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• pp.2509-2528
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• 2019

There are various styles of license plates for different countries and use cases that require style-specific methods. In this paper, we propose and illustrate a multi-style license plate recognition system. The proposed system performs a series of processes for license plate candidates detection, structure classification, character segmentation and character recognition, respectively. Specifically, we introduce a license plate structure classification process to identify its style that precedes character segmentation and recognition processes. We use a K-Nearest Neighbors algorithm with pre-training steps to recognize numbers and characters on multi-style license plates. To show feasibility of our multi-style license plate recognition system, we evaluate our system for multi-style license plates covering single line, double line, different backgrounds and character colors on Korean and the U.S. license plates. For the evaluation of Korean license plate recognition, we used a 50 minutes long input video that contains 138 vehicles of 6 different license plate styles, where each frame of the video is processed through a series of license plate recognition processes. From two experiments results, we show that various LP styles can be recognized under 50 ms processing time and with over 99% accuracy, and can be extended through additional learning and training steps.

• Journal of the Korea Society of Computer and Information
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• v.26 no.1
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• pp.93-101
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• 2021

In this paper, a vehicle license plate detection scheme is proposed that uses the spatial attention areas to detect accurately the license plates in various real-road situations. First, the previous WPOD-NET was analyzed, and its detection accuracy is evaluated as lower due to the unnecessary noises in the wide detection candidate areas. To resolve this problem, a vehicle license plate detection model is proposed that uses the candidate area of the license plate as a spatial attention areas. And we compared its performance to that of the WPOD-NET, together with the case of using the optimal spatial attention areas using the ground truth data. The experimental results show that the proposed model has about 20% higher detection accuracy than the original WPOD-NET since the proposed scheme uses tight detection candidate areas.