A new sharpness based approach for character segmentation in License plate images

Vijeta Khare, Palaiahnakote Shivakumara, Paramesran Raveendran, Liang Kim Meng, Hon Hock Woon

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference PaperResearchpeer-review

10 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Character segmentation from License plate is challenging as it suffers from non-uniform illumination, blur and touching adjacent character due to head light of vehicles effect etc. This paper presents a new approach based on sharpness of character and the space regions for segmentation. We explore Gradient Vector Flow Opposite Direction Pair of pixels for seed point's selection. From the seed points, the proposed approach detects probable cuts between character components based on minimum cost path estimation. Then we propose a new sharpness for detecting candidate cuts from the probable cuts based on Laplacian zero crossing points and Sobel-Gradient. The average width of candidate cuts is considered as reference cut to identify the correct cuts between character components. Experimental results on real industry dataset of license plate shows that the proposed approach is robust to touching, blur, poor quality images. Further, comparative study with an existing approach shows that the proposed approach outperforms the existing approach.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationProceedings - 3rd IAPR Asian Conference on Pattern Recognition, ACPR 2015
PublisherIEEE, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
Pages544-548
Number of pages5
ISBN (Electronic)9781479961009
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 7 Jun 2016
Externally publishedYes
EventIAPR Asian Conference on Pattern Recognition (ACPR) 2015 - Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Duration: 3 Nov 20166 Nov 2016
Conference number: 3rd
https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/conhome/7484414/proceeding (Proceedings)

Conference

ConferenceIAPR Asian Conference on Pattern Recognition (ACPR) 2015
Abbreviated titleACPR 2015
Country/TerritoryMalaysia
CityKuala Lumpur
Period3/11/166/11/16
Internet address

Keywords

  • Character segmentation
  • Cost path estimation
  • Gradient vector flow
  • Laplacian zero crossing points
  • Refined cuts
  • Sharpness
  • Sobel-gradient

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