Automatic Vehicle License Plate Extraction Using Region-Based Convolutional Neural Networks and Morphological Operations

Abstract

The number and range of the candidate vehicle license plate (VLP) region affects the result of the VLP extraction symmetrically. Therefore, in order to improve the VLP extraction rate, many candidate VLP regions are selected. However, there is a problem that the processing time increases symmetrically. In this paper, we propose a method that allows detecting a vehicle license plate in the real-time mode. To do this, the proposed method makes use of the region-based convolutional neural network (R-CNN) method and morphological operations. The R-CNN method is a deep learning method that selects a large number of candidate regions from an input image and compares them to determine whether objects of interest are included. However, this method has limitations when used in real-time processing. Therefore, to address this limitation in the proposed method, while selecting a candidate vehicle region, the selection range is reduced based on the size and position of the vehicle in the input image; hence, processing can be performed quickly. A vehicle license plate is detected by performing a morphological operation based on the edge pixel distribution of the detected vehicle region. Experimental results show that the detection rate of vehicles is approximately 92% in real road environments, and the detection rate of vehicle license plates is approximately 83%.