2009 Fourth International Conference on Innovative Computing, Information and Control

A New Method for License Plate Location Based on Top-hat Transform and
Wavelet Transform
Wenju Li, Zhengqiang Zhu,and Zhouen Jiang
School of Computer & Information Technology
Liaoning Normal University
Dalian, China
wenjuli@dl.cn
vehicle license plate by the texture feature with wavelet
transform and BP neural network.

AbstractIn this paper, a novel method of the number

license plate location based on top-hat transform and wavelet
transform is proposed. First, top-hat transform is used to
suppress the background of image and remove the nonuniform illumination. Second, vertical edge detection and
morphology filter is applied to the image, coarsely location of
the license plate is completed by the structural characteristics.
And then the candidate regions of the license plate are
binarized and their VPMs (Vertical Projection Map) are
worked out, and one-dimensional discrete wavelet transform is
applied to the VPMs, and the wavelet coefficients are set as
zero and then the VPMs are reconstructed. Then, the statistics
of the reconstructed VPMs and scale coefficients are combined
to create the texture feature vectors. At last, BP neural
network is used to recognize the real vehicle license plate.
Experimental results showed the great robustness and
efficiency of the proposed method.
Keywords- Top-hat transform , wavelet transform, VPMs, BP
Neural Network, vehicle license plate
I.

II.

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A. license Plate Background Suppression based on Tophat Transform
Let I be a gray image, B be a structure element, then
the opening calculation of B to I is defined as:
I D B = ( IB) B
(1)
where, and are erosion operator and expansion
operator, respectively.
Top-hat transform is dentified as:
I TH = I I D B
(2)
Top-hat transform can suppress the background of
number plates and enhance license plate regions, so it is
very favorable to license plate location.
The original vehicle image is shown in Fig. 1, and the
result image of top-hat transform is shown in Fig. 2.

INTRODUCTION

Vehicle license plate recognition technology is very

important in the intelligent transportation systems. It has
many applications, such as road traffic monitoring,access
control, automatic toll collection, traffic law enforcement,
etc.
Vehicle license plate recognition technology mainly
contains three items: vehicle license plate location,
segmentation and recognition of the plate character. The
vehicle license plate location is a key problem, and it is the
basis of vehicle license plate recognition.
Nowadays, the main methods of vehicle license plate
location are as follows: the method based on projective
invariance[1], the method based on Hough transform[2], the
method based on the color feature of the vehicle license
plate[3], the method based on morphology[4], the method
based on the texture feature of the vehicle license plate[5,6],
the method based on artificial neural network[7], and the
method based on ,tophat transformation and text texture[8],
and so forth. The presently available methods turn out to be
not effective enough in the case of complicated background,
varying illumination, and low-quality images.
This paper is going to propose a new method of vehicle
license plate location. It suppresses the background image by
top-hat transform and get candidates of the vehicle license
plate via the structure feature, and then can detect the true

978-0-7695-3873-0/09 $29.00 2009 IEEE

ALGORITHM FOR LICENSE PLATE LOCATION

Figure 1. Original image

958

Figure 2. Result after top-hat transform

Figure 3. Vertical edge image

B. Coarse Location Based on the Structure Feature of

license Plates
The horizontal template of Sobel operator is applied to
the image in figure 2 to detect its vertical edge. The result of
the vertical edge detection is shown in Fig. 3. Then
morphological closing is implemented and get the connected
region image, as shown in Fig. 4. Chinese license plate has
an obvious structure feature, namely the width height ratio
is 3.14.Taking into account possible inclination of license
plates, the width height ratio could be set between 1.5~5.
The connected regions without the proper width height ratio
are eliminated. If only one connected region remains, it
could be regarded as the region of the vehicle license plate.
Otherwise, the filling degree will be used.
The filling degree of connected region is defined as
follows:
Let S1 be area of the connected region; Xmin and Xmax
be the minimum and maximum values of horizontal
coordinates of the pixels in the connected region,
respectively. Ymin and Ymax be the minimum and
maximum values of vertical coordinates of the pixels in the
connected region, respectively The area S=(Xmax-Xmin)
(Ymax-Ymin), then F= S1/S. F is defined as the filling
degree of connected region.
License plate regions have larger F values than non
number plate regions. A proper threshold value T is elected ,
and the regions with F smaller than T are excluded. The
region will be regarded as real license plate region if only
one connected region remains.. Otherwise, texture feature of
license plates will be used to locate real vehicle license
plates. The result of coarse location according to the
structure feature of license Plates is shown in Fig. 5.

Figure 4. Connected region after closing

Figure 5. Result of coarse location

1 One-dimensional discrete wavelet transform

Assuming
f(n)
is
a
sequence
of
numbers,
J
n = 0,1," , M 1, M = 2 , (x) and (x ) are scale

959

The result is shown in Fig. 6- Fig. 8. Fig. 6 is the

binarized vehicle plate region, Fig. 7 is its VPM, and Fig. 8
is the reconstructed VPM. Fig. 8 shows that the
reconstructed VPM is more smoothing and anti-noise.For
the reconstructed VPM, the number of the wave peaks and
texture statistics are more qualified to the essential attributes
of the texture feature of the vehicle plate region.

function and wavelet function,respectively,then the discrete

wavelet transform is defined as follows:
1
W (0, k ) =
f (n) 0,k (n)
(3)
M n

W ( j , k ) =

f ( n) =

M
+

Here,

1
M

1
M

f (n)

j,k

( n)

(4)

W (0, k )

0, k

( n)

k
J 1

W ( j, k )

(5)
j,k

( n)

j =0 k

k = 0,1," ,2 j 1 .The W (0, k ) is

called

the
Figure 6. Vehicle plate region

approximation or scaling coefficient and W ( j , k ) is called

the detail or wavelet coefficient.
2 Texture Feature Extraction via One-dimensional
Wavelet transform.
The vehicle license plate is composed of seven characters
with obvious texture feature. The texture statistics and the
numbers of peak and trough of wave for vertical projection
of license plates generally are used to locate the vehicle
license plates. But the method is sensitive to noise. The
proposal here is that wavelet transform is applied to the
vertical projection in order to eliminate the noise, and then
the vertical projection is reconstructed. Then the texture
statistics of the reconstructed vertical projection is used to
construct the license plates texture feature. The process is
depicted in detail as follows:
Step 1: Computing a two-scale db1 wavelet transform for
the one-dimensional vertical projection sequence f(n);
Step 2: Setting the wavelet coefficients as zaeo;
Step 3: Computing a two-scale db1 inverse wavelet
transform and gaining a reconstructed sequence f (n) ;
Step 4: Computing the texture statistics;
average projection value m:
M 1 
1
m=
f ( n)
M n

Figure 7. Vertical projection of Fig. 6

Figure 8. Reconstructed vertical projection

3 Determining Real License Plate Region Using BP

Neural Network.
After calculating the texture feature vectors of the candidate
license plate regions, they are sent to the trained BP neural
network and then the texture would be recognized. BP
neural network consists of 1 input layer, 1 hidden layer and
1output layer. There are 27 nodes in input layer, 15 nodes in
hidden layer and 1 node in output layer. The activation-transition functions of both hidden layer and output layer are
Sigmoid function. If the output amount to 1, the candidate
license plate region is the real license plate region.

(6)

average offset measurement :

1
M 1

M 1

( f ( n) m )

III.

(7)

n=0

projection smoothness measurement R:

R = 1 1 /(1 + 2 )

(8)

third-order moments of the projection value 3 :

M 1

3 =

(n 2 )


f ( n)

n =0

( M 1) 3

Step 5: constructing the texture feature vectors X .

X = [W (2, k ), m, 2 , R, 3 ]

EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS

After applying this method to 216 vehicle images which are

taken in different complex backgrounds and illumination
conditions, effective location rate for the license plates
reaches 97%. If the license plates are rather dirty and fuzzy,
or there is any non-license plate region with the texture
similar to that of license plates, the location error may take
place.

(9)

IV.

CONCLUSIONS

A new vehicle license plate locating method is put forward

in this paper. This method restrains background by top-hat
transform, coarsely locate the license plate by structural

(10)

960

[3]

characteristics of number plates, and accurately locate the

license plate by combining wavelet transform with BP
neural network and using plate texture. The experimental
results showed that proposed method is effectual.

[4]

ACKNOWLEDGMENT
[5]

This study is supported by doctoral scientific research

foundation of Liaoning Province of China (Grant
No.20061052) and by scientific research Program of Higher
Education of Liaoning Educational Committee. (Grant
No.20060484).

[6]

[7]

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