• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SP
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• v.46 no.2
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• pp.40-47
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• 2009

This paper proposes a method for vehicle license plate detection using mathematical morphology and symmetry. In general, the shape, color, size, and position of license plate are regulated by authorities for a better recognition by human. Among them, the relatively big intensity difference between the letter and the background region of the license plate and the symmetry about the plate are major discriminating factors for the detection. For the first, the opened image is subtracted from the closed image to intensify the region of plate using the rectangular structuring element which has the width of the distance between two characters. Second the subtraction image is average filtered with the mask size of the plate. Third, the column maximum graph of the average filtered image is acquired and the symmetry of the graph is measured at every position. Fourth, the peaks of the average filtered image are searched. Finally, the plate is assumed to be positioned around the one of local maxima nearest to the point of the highest symmetry. About 1,000 images taken by speed regulation camera are used for the experiment. The experimental result shows that the plate detection rate is about 93%.