Vehicle Number Plate Detection and Character Segmentation

In this paper, we present Automatic Number Plate detection and character segmentation for Indian Cars. Number plate design protocols are not followed in India. Characters on plate are in different Indian languages, as well as in English. We present the number plate detection and character segmentation work, with English characters. Number plate detection is quite challenging task, mainly due to diversity of plate formats, and the non-uniform illumination conditions during the image acquisition. To eliminate possible fake candidate, extracted plate regions is evaluated on the basis of geometric features of the plate: density, aspect ratio and horizontal cuts. Character segmentation is done by using connected component and vertical projection analysis. The performances on an average are: Number Plate Detection rate: 85%, Character Segmentation rate: 83%.