A Method to Extract Vehicle Number Plates by Applying Signal Processing Techniques

신호처리 기법을 응용한 차량번호판 추출방법

This paper describes algorithms 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 charateristics of license plates (the boundary information 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 gray 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 probelm of failure in extracting the license plates due to degraded plate boundary as in the conventional methods and resolves the provlem of the time requirement by processing in real time such that practical application is possible.