International Journal of Computer Theory and Engineering

Abstract

Persian License Plate Detection and Recognition System is an image-processing technique used to identify avehicle by its license plate. In fact this system is one kind of automatic inspection of transport, traffic and security systems and is of considerable interest because of its potential applications to areas such as automatic toll collection, traffic law enforcement and security control of restricted areas. License plate location is an important stage in vehicle license plate recognition for automated transport system. This paper presents a real time and robust method of license plate detection and recognition based on the morphology and template matching. In this system main stage is the isolation of the license plate, from the digital image of the car obtained by a digital camera under different circumstances such as illumination, slop, distance, and angle. The algorithm starts with preprocessing and signal conditioning. Next license plate is localized using morphological operators. Then a template matching scheme will be used to recognize the digits and characters within the plate. The system is tested on Iranian car plate images, and the performance was 97.3% of correct plates identification and localization and 92% of correct recognized characters. The results regarding the complexity of the problem and diversity of the test cases show the high accuracy and robustness of the proposed method. The method could also be applicable for other applications in the transport information systems, where automatic recognition of registration plates, shields, signs, and so on is often necessary.