Ch.Jaya Lakshmi et al.
/ (IJAEST) INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ADVANCED ENGINEERING SCIENCES AND TECHNOLOGIES
A Novel Approach for Indian License Plate
Recognition System
Ch.Jaya Lakshmi, Dr.A.Jhansi Rani
V.R.Siddhartha V.R.Siddhartha
Engineering College Engineering College
Vijayawada Vijayawada
jayavrsec@gmail.com jhansi9rani@gmail.com
Abstract - License Plate Recognition System (LPRS) is one of
the most important part of the Intelligent Transportation
System (ITS). License plate automatic recognition has been
extensively applied in the Intellectual traffic system and
Public transit security system. The main objective is to design
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an efficient automatic authorized vehicle identification system
by using the vehicle number plate. Location of the license
plate is performed using its inherent texture characteristics
and wavelets. Character segmentation is done using
Connected Component Analysis. Character Recognition of the
vehicle license plate based on template matching. This system
is implemented using MATLAB. The proposed system mainly
applicable to Indian License Plates.
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Keywords : LPR, Wavelets, Location, Segmentation, Character
Recognition.
I.INTRODUCTION
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The Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) was
invented in 1976 at the Police Scientific Development
Branch in the UK. License Plate Recognition system
(LPRS) is similar to ANPR. However, it gained much
interest during the last decade along with the improvement
of digital camera and the increase in computational
capacity. It is simply the ability to automatically extract
and recognition of vehicle number plate’s characters from
an image. In essence it consists of a camera or frame
grabber that has the capability to grab an image, find the
location of the number in the image and then extract the
characters for character recognition tool to translate the
pixels into numerically readable character. It can also be
used to detect and prevent a wide range of criminal
activities and for security control of a highly restricted
areas like military zones or area around top government
offices. The system is computationally inexpensive
compare to the other ANPR systems. The ANPR system
ISSN: 2230-7818 @ 2011 http://www.ijaest.iserp.org. All rights Reserved.
Vol No. 6, Issue No. 1, 010 - 014
Dr.K.Sri Ramakrishna M.KantiKiran
V.R.Siddhartha V.R.Siddhartha
Engineering College Engineering College
Vijayawada Vijayawada
srk_kalva@yahoo.com kantikiran81@googlemail.com
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works in three steps, the first step is the detection and
capturing a vehicle image, the second steps is the detection
and extraction of number plate in an image. The third
section use image segmentation technique to get individual
character and optical character recognition (OCR) to
recognize the individual character with the help of database
stored for each and every alphanumeric character.
In India, Vehicles used for domestic purpose contains the
license plate with white color as its background and black
characters as its foreground whereas vehicles used for
commercial purpose contains the license plate with yellow
color as its background and black characters as its
foreground.
II. Related work
There are several common algorithms to locate the license
plate. Searching algorithms mainly rely on color
information and special signs. Widely used procedures that
are solely based on image processing are as Hough
transform, Top-Hat and Bottom-Hat filtering (highlights
the black-white transitions) [3] Binary morphology
algorithm (for example: classical Otsu method) [5]Edge
finding methods (Sobel, Laplacian, Roberts, Prewitt,
Canny operators) [4] [5] [2] Procedures based on the color
of the background and characters. Region-growing
algorithm (RGA): By using a recursive region-growing
algorithm, the dark regions (license plate symbols)
surrounded by light areas (background of the license plate)
can then be classified. Each region has a unique position
and dimensions. [1]Checking: color, size, ratio.
Presently, there are several common algorithms for the
segmentation of license plate characters, such as direct
segmentation, template matching, projection and cluster
analysis. (1) In the direct segmentation algorithm[6], the
license plate characters are segmented directly according to
the prior knowledge of the width of characters and spaces
between characters. This algorithm is simple and rapid. But
the left and right side of characters region must be located
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accurately before using it. So it is reliable to the effect of
license plate location. (2) In the template matching
algorithm [7], a template is used to scan the image of
license plate to find the maximum difference value of the
number of white points between the region of character and
the region of space between characters. This algorithm can
avoid falsely segmenting characters.(3) In the projection
algorithm with template matching[8] [9], the number of
white points in vertical direction is counted and recorded.
The character region has more white points than the region
of space between characters. By detecting the trough of
white points between characters, the spaces can be located
and then the boundary of characters can be located.
Character Recognition uses the basic methods as pattern
recognition and Neural Network based recognition
systems.(1) In Pattern Recognition method[10], the
character can be written differently so the pattern may
varies. this may give false result.(2) Neural Network based
method[11][12], this system needs training to recognise the
characters. In this computational time depends on the
training set and also it is very expensive.
III. STRUCTURE OF TYPICAL LPR SYSTEM
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The typical LPR system consists of four major parts:
Image capture, license plate location, character
segmentation and character recognition. As shown in
Figure 1.
Image Acquisition
A
Location of License Plate
Character Segmentation
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Character Recognition
Figure 1. Vehicle license Plate character recognition
system block diagram
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Vol No. 6, Issue No. 1, 010 - 014
IV.IMPLEMENTATION
A. Image Acquisition
The first step is the capturing of an image using the USB
camera connected to the PC. The images are captured in
RGB format so it can be further process for the number
plate extraction. Pre-processing of the captured image is
performed such as RGB to gray scale conversion, noise
filtering, Binarization process.
B. Location of License Plate
This plate localization algorithm is based on combining
textural characteristics of license plate and morphological
operation sensitive to specific shapes in the input image
with a good threshold value by which the license plate is
located. A fine percentage of localization of License plates
is achieved by this algorithm. This is a better performing
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algorithm for License Plate Images with complicated
background. License Plate consists of many vertical edges
because it consists of Borders, Characters, and Digits.
Sobel mask is used to detect vertical edges in the input
image. Wavelet decomposition is performed to have better
analysis. The resultant image is converted into a binary
image. Morphological operations such as erosion and
dilation are performed to find the location of the license
plate.
C. Character Segmentation
In this paper, the segmentation of license plate characters
is done after license plate location and binarization. A
figure of license plate region after license plate location
and binarization is displayed as Fig. 2. Suppose that the
image data after license plate location and binarization is
stored in matrix B. The number of columns of BW is stored
in C. The number of rows of BW is stored in R.
Figure 2. License Plate after Location
1) Precise Location of the Top and Bottom Boundary
In this step, a scanline algorithm is used to accurately
locate the top and bottom boundary of license plate
characters. The scanline algorithm is based on the feature
that the gray scale in character region changes frequently.
Thus the total number of transition in character region is
more than the total number of transition in other region.
There are atleast seven characters in license plate region
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Vol No. 6, Issue No. 1, 010 - 014

and every character has more than two Jumps. So we can

choose fourteen as a threshold value. To be on the safe
side, we can choose twelve as the threshold value. If the
total number of transitions in a certain line is greater than
twelve, this line may be in character region. Otherwise, it is
not in character region.
The specific algorithm for precise location of the top and
bottom boundary is as follows.
(a) Location of Top boundary
Scan the figure of license plate from the half of it to the top
of it line by line. If the total number of Jumps in a certain
line is less than twelve, it can be marked as the top
boundary of character region.
Figure.4. License Plate after precise location
2) Vertical Projection and Thresholding
Project the figure in vertical direction after precise location
of the top and bottom boundary. Because black points in
character region is much more than the black points in the
region between characters, the result of projection appears
continuous peak-trough-peak.
The specific algorithm for vertical projection and
thresholding is as follows.

(b) Locate the bottom boundary (a) Vertical projection

Scan the figure of license plate from the half of it to the Scan the figure from left to right column by column after

bottom of it line by line. If the total number of Jumps in a
certain line is less than twelve, it can be marked as the
bottom boundary of character region.
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precise location of the top and bottom boundary and count
the total number of black points in every column. The
result is stored in array projection . It is obvious that the
length of Project is C.

(b) Thresholding
Input B
ES Suppose that one represents peak and zero represents
trough. The threshold value is set to h/10. Judge every
value in array projection . If Projection[i] is greater than
h/10, Projection[i] is set to one. Otherwise, Projection[i] is
set to zero. Where h is the modified no of rows of the
Row = R/2 binary image after precise location of top and bottom
boundaries.

Count Transitions
A
from 0 to1 and 1 to
0 and store it as n Row=Row+1 Figure.5. Character segmentation

D. Character Recognition using template matching

Y In order to overcome the shortcomings of the simple

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n>=12
template matching algorithm, low-resolution template
matching method is adopted, namely the using of a lower
N pixel resolution (such as 4 x 8) to represent the images and
templates to be recognized. Each matrix element
Bottom=Row corresponds to a sub-matrix in a high-resolution matrix.
The element's value is the average of the pixel gray value
in the corresponding high-resolution sub-matrix. Compared
with the high-resolution matching algorithm, correct
Figure.3. Algorithm for location of bottom boundary. identification rate of the letters and numbers is greatly
enhanced. The reason is that if the resolution rate goes
through a moderate reduction, the error generated by the
image distortion and the noise will be decreased. The
recognition errors of letters and numbers mainly occur in

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 Ch.Jaya Lakshmi et al. / (IJAEST) INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ADVANCED ENGINEERING SCIENCES AND TECHNOLOGIES
Vol No. 6, Issue No. 1, 010 - 014

some of the characters with the very similar main structures

but some detailed differences, such as C and 0, 3 and 5.
When we use the similarity method to calculate the
matching degree, the evaluation of these values provided
by these subtle differences is crucial. The use of high-
resolution template matching method, these deviations in
the relevant calculation have a serious interference of the
evaluation of the value function, which makes the
calculation unstable. When we use the low-resolution
template matching method, the deviation of this alignment
will have a small proportion in each element of a matrix.
Therefore, in a considerable number of cases, it does not
affect the structure description of the alpha-numeric and
thereby increases the correct identification rate.

1) Calculation of Similarity

The similarity is function which is used to measure the

degree of similarity between the patterns to be identified

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and templates. In the template matching method, the
formula of similarity has important implications on the
recognition results. In the low-resolution template
matching method, using the similarity discriminate method
mainly include two kinds: absolute distance and similarity.
The absolute value distance regards the sum of the distance
between image and the corresponding image pixel value of
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template as a function to measure the similarity.

Given that image F and the template M are respectively

image of X x Y, the formula to calculate the absolute value
of the distance is as follows:

X 1 Y 1
D( F , M )  F (i, j )  M (i, j ) (1)
i 0 j 0

V. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS Finally the displayed license number is KA 19 P 8488.

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VI. CONCLUSION

The ultimate goal is to obtain vehicle information from

License Plate Recognition System and the recognition and
extraction of the license plate is the key of parts in the
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vehicle monitoring processing. In this paper, it proposes

and designs the algorithm of the image processing and
segmentation, based on the analysis of the variety of
character recognition system. Through experiments and
improvements, the effect of the improvement is obvious
and the character recognition rate increased substantially.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

This research was supported by grant from Department of

TIFAC CORE in Telematics in V R Siddhartha
Engineering College, Vijayawada..

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 Ch.Jaya Lakshmi et al. / (IJAEST) INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ADVANCED ENGINEERING SCIENCES AND TECHNOLOGIES
Vol No. 6, Issue No. 1, 010 - 014

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