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Automatic Localization System of Libyan License Plates

Conference Paper · October 2015

DOI: 10.1109/VPPC.2015.7352902

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Ali Ganoun
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 AUTOMATIC LOCALIZATION SYSTEM OF LIBYAN LICENSE PLATES

Ali Ganoun

University of Tripoli, Facility of Engineering, Electrical & Electronic Department, Tripoli, Libya
a.ganoun@ee.uot.edu.ly

ABSTRACT The recognition step converts the segmented symbols into

characters by pre-defined recognition models.
Video based traffic surveillance using License Plate There are several algorithms considered for this each stage.
Recognition (LPR) system is an essential part for any As an example localization can be based on vertical and
intelligent traffic management system. There is a growing horizontal projections in the image. The segmentation can be
trend of literature that recognizes the importance of LPR implemented based on vertical projections. The recognition
system. Generally, LPR system is a challenging area of can be implemented based on template matching or neural
research due to its importance to a wide range of commercial networks [1-4].
applications such as collision warning systems, finding stolen
cars, and automatic congestion charge systems. The first
stage for any LPR system is the Localization stage. The
accuracy of this stage affect the complete LPR system. This
paper presents an automatic localization method of Libyan
license plate based on morphological operations and zero
crossing approach. The performance of the proposed
localization method tested and studied with three video
sequences.

Index Terms— LPR, localization of license plate, zero

crossing method.

1. INTRODUCTION

Modern cities need to establish effectively an Intelligent

Transportation Systems (ITS) that can be used for traffic
management and scheduling. The vehicle License Plate
Recognition (LPR) technology represent the main tool for
any ITS system.
LPR is generally divided into three main stages: license plate
detection or localization, character segmentation and
character recognition as shown in Figure 1. License plate
localization, including algorithms to detect the rectangular
area of the license plate in an original image, is the most
crucial and difficult processing stage. The success and
accuracy of the localization will directly determine the post
recognition and identification accuracy. Usually the
irregularities in the texture and abrupt changes in the local Figure 1: The main stages of the LPR system
features of the images in this stage manifest the presence of a
license plate.
The segmentation stages based on detecting boundaries and There are several undesired conditions influence the LPR
separates the symbols/characters from each other in each systems such as image blur, undesired illumination, rotation,
detected license plate. vehicle model, character type and format, small size license
plates, complex background and a wide range of illumination
conditions [5-7].
This paper presents an automatic localization of Libyan LPR
system based on zero crossing technique.
As shown in Figure 1, the input to the system is a sequence
of images from the video camera, the output is the list of
detected license plates with more information about the
detected plates such as the date, time of detection and the
confidence of each stage.
2. ZERO CROSSING
The main idea in this paper can be illustrated as shown in
Figure 2. The figure shows a typical Libyan license plate in
the left side. The right image shows a plot of the gray level
values along three scan lines in the left image. The changes
in the gray level values in the images manifest the presence
of a license plate. Traditionally the localization stage is
performed by considering the vertical and horizontal
projections. The approach presented in this paper is based on
calculating a number of crossing of the horizontal central line
(i.e. the number of zero crossing) with many scan lines and
compare the average number of crossing to a predefined
threshold [1]. Based on the average number of crossing lines
the candidate segment can be classified as license plate or not.
candidate place of the license plate as the pixel intensity
changes between the objects and the background makes the
license plate area recognizable by this method. Subtracting
the resulting image from the original one result in an image
where the license plate can be easily distinguished. Figure 4
demonstrates these steps. The output of the Tophat is adjusted
in order to obtain an efficient threshold which is used to
convert the image to black & white image; the purpose of the
binarization is to detect the white areas (corresponding to
high frequencies in the original image) in the output of the
Tophat step. The filtering step used to filter the candidates
places of the license plate. The first part of the filtering is to
calculate the average number of zero crossing for each
segment as explained in the last section. If the number is
greater than a predefined threshold, all segments that did not
satisfy that condition than filtered out. The next step is to
compare the aspect ratio (the ratios of width to height) of each
segment and filter out all segments with aspect ratio very
small or very large to the aspect ratio of the standard Libyan
license plate.

License Plate

The gray level value

Of the three scan lines

Figure 2: License plate and the cross section scan curves

3. LOCALIZATION SYSTEM ARCHITECTURE

The complete proposed localization system shown in Figure

3. The first stage is the image morphological opening
operation which suppresses most of the high frequencies in Figure 3: The proposed localization system
the image (mainly license plate area), by using disk structure
element [3]. The Tophat operation is a morphological
operation used as an enhancement step to recognize the
 lines of other candidate plates which are filtered out in the
filtering stage.

(A) (B)

(C) (D)
Figure 4: The result after (A) Opening operation - (B)
Tophat operation - (C) The adjusted Tophat image - (D) The
binarized operation

4. EXPERIMENT RESULT
Experiments have been performed to test the proposed
localization system and to measure its accuracy. The system
performance have been tested with three different video
sequences containing more than 850 frames and about 250
plates. The video sequences were taken under various
illumination conditions. The main characteristics of the test
sequences shown in Table 1. The output is compared to the
manual correct localization. Figure 5 shows a sample images
from the test sequences.
.

Figure 6: Examples of correct localization

Figure 7 shows examples of True Positive and False positive

localization from the first and second sequences.

Table 2 summarized the performance analysis of the

Figure 5: Sample images from the first and second sequence
proposed localization system with the test sequences. Also,
Table 3 shows the percent of correct detection for each
TABLE 1: Test sequences characteristics. sequence.
Num. of Frames Num. of Plates The localization performances tables of the test sequences
demonstrate that the accuracy of the proposed system is not
Sequence 1 265 98
very high which can be explained in many cases due to the
Sequence 2 285 81 quality of the video sequences.
Sequence 3 291 88

Figure 6 shows the correct localization results of some

experiments that were performed with the correct localization
enclosed in red bounding box. The figure shows also the scan
 5. CONCLUSIONS

In this paper we have presented an automatic license plate

localization of Libyan license plates in video sequences
technique based on morphological operations and zero
crossing technique. The system has been tested over three
video sequences with a large number of plates. Further
research should be done to improve the accuracy of the
proposed localization method.

6. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This research was supported by the Libyan National Agency
for Scientific Research.

REFERENCES

[1] T. Duan et al. “Building an Automatic Vehicle License-Plate

Recognition System”, Intl. Conf. in Computer Science – RIVF’05.

[2] V. Nguyen et. al, “A Fast Evolutionary Algorithm for Real-Time

Vehicle Detection”, IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON VEHICULAR
TECHNOLOGY, VOL.62, NO.6, JULY2013.

[3] W Algablawi et al. “Libyan Vehicle License Plate Recognition

System” International Conference on Elecetrical and Computer
Engineering, 2013.

[5] O. Martinsky, "Algorithmic and Mathematical Principles of

Automatic Number Plate Recognition Systems", B.Sc.Thesis, Brno
Figure 7: Examples of True Positive and False positive University of Technology, Faculty of Information Technology,
Department of Intelligent Systems, 2007.
localization
[6] O. Khalifa et al "Malaysian Vehicle License Plate Recognition",
The International Arab Journal of Information Technology, Vol.4,
TABLE 2: Localization result of the test sequences. pp.359-364, October 2007.
True False False
Positive Positive Negative [7] C. Rahman et al "A Real Time Vehicle's License Plate
Recognition System", Proceedings of the IEEE Conference on
Sequence 1 63 42 32 Advanced Video and Signal Based Surveillance, 2003.
Sequence 2 58 64 81
Sequence 1 50 60 38

TABLE 3: License plate localization performances of the

test sequences
Percent of correct detection
Sequence 1 64%
Sequence 2 71%
Sequence 1 56%

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