• The Journal of the Korea institute of electronic communication sciences
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• v.5 no.5
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• pp.471-476
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• 2010

In this paper, we propose an effective method that recognizes the vehicle license plate using RGB color information and back-propagation neural network algorithm. First, the image of the vehicle license plate is adjusted by the Mean of Blue values in the vehicle plate and two candidate areas of Red and Green region are classified by calculating the differences of pixel values and the final Green area is searched by back-propagation algorithm. Second, our method detects the area of the vehicle plate using the frequence of the horizontal and the vertical histogram. Finally, each of codes are detected by an edge detection algorithm and are recognized by error back-propagation algorithm. In order to evaluate the performance of our proposed extraction and recognition method, we have run experiments on a new car plates. Experimental results showed that the proposed license plate extraction is better than that of existing HSI information model and the overall recognition was effective.

• Journal of Korea Multimedia Society
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• v.11 no.12
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• pp.1649-1657
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• 2008

In this paper, to overcome the failure of binarization for the characters suffered from low contrast and non-uniform illumination in license plate character recognition system, we improved the binarization method by combining local thresholding with global thresholding and edge detection. Firstly, apply the local thresholding method to locate the characters in the license plate image and then get the threshold value for the character based on edge detector. This method solves the problem of local low contrast and non-uniform illumination. Finally, back-propagation Neural Network is selected as a powerful tool to perform the recognition process. The results of the experiments i1lustrate that the proposed binarization method works well and the selected classifier saves the processing time. Besides, the character recognition system performed better recognition accuracy 95.7%, and the recognition speed is controlled within 0.3 seconds.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.13 no.10
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• pp.19-26
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• 2013

In the Malaysian license plates, alphabets and numerals which are made by plastic, are adhered to a frame as embossing style and occasionally characters in horizontal, vertical directions are aligned with narrow space. So the extraction of character stroke information can be hard in the vehicle images of low illumination intensity. In this paper, Malaysian license plate recognition algorithm for low illumination intensity image is proposed. DoG filtering based character stroke generation method is introduced to derive exact connected components of strokes in the vehicle image of low illumination intensity. After localization of plate by connected component analysis, characters are segmented and recognized. Algorithm is experimented for the 6,046 vehicle images captured in Kuala Lumpur by IR camera without using any special light during day and night. The experimental results show that recognition accuracy of plates is 96.1%.

• Journal of the Korea Convergence Society
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• v.10 no.1
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• pp.103-113
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• 2019

License plate recognition camera is dedicated device designed for acquiring images of the target vehicle for recognizing letters and numbers in a license plate. Mostly, it is used as a part of the system combined with server and image analysis module rather than as a single use. However, building a system for vehicle license plate recognition is costly because it is required to construct a facility with a server providing the management and analysis of the captured images and an image analysis module providing the extraction of numbers and characters and recognition of the vehicle's plate. In this study, we would like to develop an embedded type convergent camera (Edge Base) which can expand the function of the camera to not only the license plate recognition but also the security CCTV function together and to perform two functions within the camera. This embedded type convergence camera equipped with a high resolution 4K IP camera for clear image acquisition and fast data transmission extracted license plate area by applying YOLO, a deep learning software for multi object recognition based on open source neural network algorithm and detected number and characters of the plate and verified the detection accuracy and recognition accuracy and confirmed that this camera can perform CCTV security function and vehicle number plate recognition function successfully.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.3 no.5
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• pp.511-519
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• 1997

This paper presents the automatic recognition algorithm of the license number in on vehicle image. The proposed algorithm uses the correlation coefficient and Hough transform to detect license plate. The m/n ratio reduction is performed to save time and memory. By the correlation coefficient between the standard pattern and the target pattern, licence plate area is roughly extracted. On the extracted local area, preprocessing and binarization is performed. The Hough transform is applied to find the extract outline of the plate. If the detection fails, a smaller or a larger standard pattern is used to compute the correlation coefficient. Through this process, the license plate of different size can be extracted. Two algorithms to each separate number are proposed. One segments each number with projection-histogram, and the other segments each number with the label. After each character is separated, it is recognized by the neural network. This research overlomes the problems in conventional methods, such as the time requirement or failure in extraction of outlines which are due to the processing of the entire image, and by processing in real time, the practical application is possible.

• KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems (TIIS)
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• v.11 no.6
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• pp.3188-3207
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• 2017

In this paper, we propose an image enhancement algorithm to improve license plate extraction rate in various environments (Day Street, Night Street, Underground parking lot, etc.). The proposed algorithm is composed of image enhancement algorithm and license plate extraction algorithm. The image enhancement method can improve an image quality of the degraded image, which utilizes a histogram information and overall gray level distribution of an image. The proposed algorithm employs an interpolated probability distribution value (PDV) in order to control a sudden change in image brightness. Probability distribution value can be calculated using cumulative distribution function (CDF) and probability density function (PDF) of the captured image, whose values are achieved by brightness distribution of the captured image. Also, by adjusting the image enhancement factor of each part region based on image pixel information, it provides a function that can adjust the gradation of the image in more details. This processed gray image is converted into a binary image, which fuses narrow breaks and long thin gulfs, eliminates small holes, and fills gaps in the contour by using morphology operations. Then license plate region is detected based on aspect ratio and license plate size of the bound box drawn on connected license plate areas. The images have been captured by using a video camera or a personal image recorder installed in front of the cars. The captured images have included several license plates on multilane roads. Simulation has been executed using OpenCV and MATLAB. The results show that the extraction success rate is more improved than the conventional algorithms.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information and Communication Engineering
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• v.13 no.11
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• pp.2277-2282
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• 2009

In this paper, we proposed a new recognition method can be used in application systems using morphological features, difference operators and ART2 algorithm. At first, edges are extracted from an acquired car image by a camera using difference operators and the image of extracted edges is binarized by a block binarization method. In order to extract license plate area, noise areas are eliminated by applying morphological features of new and existing types of license plate to the 8-directional edge tracking algorithm in the binarized image. After the extraction of license plate area, mean binarization and mini-max binarization methods are applied to the extracted license plate area in order to eliminated noises by morphological features of individual elements in the license plate area, and then each character is extracted and combined by Labeling algorithm. The extracted and combined characters(letter and number symbols) are recognized after the learning by ART2 algorithm. In order to evaluate the extraction and recognition performances of the proposed method, 200 vehicle license plate images (100 for green type and 100 for white type) are used for experiment, and the experimental results show the proposed method is effective.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information and Communication Engineering
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• v.6 no.8
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• pp.1352-1357
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• 2002

This Paper describes algorithm to extract license plates in vehicle images. Conventional methods perform preprocessing on the entire vehicle image to produce the edge image and binarize it. Hough transform is applied to the binary image to find horizontal and vertical lines, and the license plate area is extracted using the characteristics of license plates. Problems with this approach are that real-time processing is not feasible due to long processing time and that the license plate area is not extracted when lighting is irregular such as at night or when the plate boundary does not show up in the image. This research uses the gray level transition characteristics of license plates to verify the digit area by examining the digit width and the level difference between the background area the digit area, and then extracts the plate area by testing the distance between the verified digits. This research solves the problem of failure in extracting the license plates due to degraded plate boundary as in the conventional methods and resolves the problem of the time requirement by processing the real time such that practical application is possible. This paper Presents a power automated license plate recognition system, which is able to read license numbers of cars, even under circumstances, which are far from ideal. In a real-life test, the percentage of rejected plates wan 13%, whereas 0.4% of the plates were misclassified. Suggestions for further improvements are given.

• IEIE Transactions on Smart Processing and Computing
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.17-26
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• 2012

This paper presents an image processing-based validation method for unrecognizable numbers in severely distorted license plate images which have been degraded by various factors including low-resolution, low light-level, geometric distortion, and periodic noise. Existing vehicle license plate recognition (LPR) methods assume that most of the image degradation factors have been removed before performing the recognition of printed numbers and letters. If this is not the case, conventional LPR becomes impossible. The proposed method adopts a novel approach where a set of reference number images are intentionally degraded using the same factors estimated from the input image. After a series of image processing steps, including geometric transformation, super-resolution, and filtering, a comparison using cross-correlation between the intentionally degraded reference and the input images can provide a successful identification of the visually unrecognizable numbers. The proposed method makes it possible to validate numbers in a license plate image taken under low light-level conditions. In the experiment, using an extended set of test images that are unrecognizable to human vision, the proposed method provides a successful recognition rate of over 95%, whereas most existing LPR methods fail due to the severe distortion.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics and Information Engineers
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• v.49 no.12
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• pp.113-123
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• 2012

Recently, various attempts have been made to apply Intelligent Transportation System under various environments and conditions. Consequently, an accurate license plate recognition regardless of vehicle location and viewing angle is required. In this paper, we propose a novel license plate recognition system which exploits a) the format of license plates to remove false candidates of license plates and to extract characters in license plates and b) the characteristics of Hangul for accurate character recognition. In order to eliminate false candidates of license plates, the proposed method first aligns the candidates of license plates horizontally, and compares the position and the shape of objects in each candidate with the prior information of license plates provided by Korean Ministry of Construction & Transportation. The prior information such as aspect ratio, background color, projection image is also used to extract characters in license plates accurately applying an improved local binarization considering luminance variation of license plates. In case of recognizing Hangul in license plates, they are initially grouped according to their shape similarity. Then a super-class method, a hierarchical analysis based on key feature points is applied to recognize Hangul accurately. The proposed method was verified with high recognition rate regardless of background image, which eventually proves that the proposed LPR system has high performance regardless of the vehicle location or viewing angle.