Building a License Plate Recognition System
for Vietnam TollBooth
Vinh Du Mai1,2
2 1
Electrical & Electronic Department
The University of Transport and Communications
Hanoi, Vietnam
(+84)9339772773, (+86)13681639973
maivinhdu@yahoo.com
ABSTRACT
The Automatic License Plate Recognition (ALPR) system has
wide application and very important in the Intelligent
Transportation System (ITS) such as the Electronic Toll
Collection (ETC) system. The purpose of this paper is designing
an Automatic License Plate Recognition (ALPR) system, which
will be applied for one-stop and non-stop ETC in Vietnam. Our
ALPR system consists of two major parts: the first part is
hardware system and the second part is software system. In the
first part, the price, types of equipments and technology will be
considered for designing, which satisfied for Vietnam
environment, Vietnam regulation in the road pricing rules and
Vietnam standard of ETC. In the second part, we will combined
image processing technology and artificial neural network to
proposed a improved software system, our software include four
modules: image capture, license plate location, characters
segmentation and characters recognition. Our ALPR software will
be tested by 700 Vietnam vehicle images, which obtained from
actual system and complex background: lightening conditions
(night & day), license angles, illumination, size and type, colors
and reflected light. Our ALPR software is more effective than
some of the existing methods earlier, the efficiency of computing
time & accuracy is improved and very satisfied for all types of
Vietnam LP and Vietnam environment.
Categories and Subject Descriptors
B.0 [Harware]: General; I.4.6 [Image Processing and
Computer Vision]: Segmentation–edge detection; I.4.7 [Image
Processing and Computer Vision]: Feature Measurement–size
and shap, projections, texture; I.4.10 [Image Processing and
Computer Vision]: Image Representation–morphological,
statistical; I.5.1 [Pattern Recognition]: Models–neural nets;
I.5.4 [Pattern Recognition]: Applications–text processing.
General Terms
Design, algorithms, performance, experimentation.
Keywords
automatic license plate recognition, artificial neural network,
electronic toll collection, intelligent transportation system.
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SoICT 2012, August 23–24, 2012, Ha Long, Vietnam.
Copyright 2012 ACM 978-1-4503-1232-5/12/08…$10.00.
Duoqian Miao1, Ruizhi Wang1
Department of Computer Science and Technology
Tongji University, Shanghai 201804, China
(+86)18621877898
miaoduoqian@163.com,
ruizhi.ann.wang@gmail.com
1. INTRODUCTION
The ALPR system is very important and popular research topic of
the ITS field, which is very important for the development of the
transport infrastructure on the world. The prototype systems of
ALPR were working by 1979, and contracts were let to produce
industrial systems, first at EMI electronics, and then at Computer
recognition systems in Wokingham. Early trial systems deployed
at the Dartford Tunnel, UK. The first system detect of a stolen car
in 1981. From 80's initial period, many countries have been
beginning to develop ALPR system [26]. ALPR system has wide
application in ITS such as: Electronic toll collection (ETC) system
[13,17,21], Car-park system [3,5,11,22], Emergency vehicle
notification system, Automatic road enforcement system [9,20],
Traveller information systems [14,15], Public transportation
systems, Speed enforcement system [20], Weigh-in-motion
system, Traffic management systems, mobile and web based
ALPR system [4,10], etc.
Unfortunately, most of these ALPR system could not apply for all
countries on the world, because of most of previous researchers
used various image sources, environment, quality of the images,
and the parameters (such as size, resolution of the images,
distance from camera to vehicle, angle of the vehicle license plate,
and so on) of the images are not same. Therefore, it is very
difficult to apply for all the countries, all environments and all
vehicles image. In the developing countries such as Vietnam
where is developing country which has been beginning to develop
and apply the ITS. In the early time, ETC system has been
deployed in some of Vietnam national roads and expressways.
Therefore, we need to research and develop ALPR system for the
all types of Vietnam LP, which satisfied for regulations,
management and environment in Vietnam, and could be applied in
one-stop & non-stop ETC system in Vietnam.
There are some technologies applied in the previous ALPR
software such as: histogram, edge detection, vertical & horizontal
projections and multilayer perceptron neural network [5], vertical
& horizontal edges, skew correction, statistical features, contour
directional counts, crossing counts & peripheral background areas
[6]. And sliding concentric windows, region of interest analysis &
neural network [7], hough transform and contour algorithm,
horizontal & vertical projection & hidden markov model [8],
niblack's algorithm, hough transforms [9], edge detection, vertical
projection and template matching [11], horizontal projection,
horizontal and vertical projections, multilayer perceptron neural
network [12]. And mathematical morphology, edge detection,
kalman filter [13], horizontal and vertical edge detection,
threshold technique, OCR software [15], embedded LPR system
based on digital signal processor [16], statistical method of
histograms, horizontal and vertical projection and neural network
[17], edge detection, multilayer perceptron neural network [18],
107
edge detection, hierarchical classifier [19], connected component
analysis [21]. But, most of these methods work under controlled
conditions, their image data were not collected in Vietnam, so it
could not applied for the Vietnam license plates. To cope with
these limitations, we have considered for the specific
characteristics of Vietnam LP and Vietnam environment to
propose an improved ALPR system, which satisfied for all types
of Vietnam LP and Vietnam environment, our ALPR system has
main contributions as following:
x Hardware system: We have proposed a hardware architecture
of ALPR system for one-stop ETC and non-stop ETC in
Vietnam, which satisfied with standard of Toll collection
system of Vietnam [23], and we also considered about cost of
equipments, quality of equipments, popularity of equipments
and easy to maintain the system.
x ALPR software: We have considered for the specific
characteristics of Vietnam LP such as: types, sizes, letters and
numbers and angles of LP to propose a ALPR software, which
satisfied for all types of Vietnam LP and Vietnam
environment. In the license plate location, we have used a new
idea to improve quality of image base on subtract operation on
the gray-scale image, according to the specific characteristics
of Vietnam LP, we have chosen an appropriate parameters to
remove noises and cutting of LP region. In the characters
segmentation, we have proposed a simple method to cut
separated two lines in the two-row LP. And in the characters
recognition, we have used two MLP network for letters and
numbers, as well as pre-processing to obtain high quality of
letters & numbers in using the network. So, the computing
time and accuracy is improved.
The rest of the paper organized as follows: section 2 is hardware
system, section 3 is ALPR software, section 4 is experimental
results, section 5 is conclusions, section 6 is acknowledgments
and the last is references.
2. HARDWARE SYSTEM
2.1 Hardware Architecture
In this paper, we proposed a hardware architecture of ALPR
system for one-stop ETC and non-stop ETC in Vietnam, which
satisfied with standard of Toll collection system of Vietnam [23],
our ALPR system consists of four modules: Vehicle detectors
(light curtain & induction loops), controllers, infrared camera &
frame grabbers (image acquisition card), computer such as Fig. 1.
Figure.1. Hardware system architecture of proposed method
When design hardware architecture for ALPR system, we need
consider some main problems such as cost of equipments, quality
of equipments, popularity of equipments and easy to maintain the
system. In this paper, we have considered above problems to
select equipments for our ALPR system, the equipments in our
ALPR system as following:
Light Curtain: We used a light curtain to detect vehicles passing.
Light curtain is a pair with a transmitter and receiver, the
transmitter projects an array of parallel infrared light beams to the
receiver, which consists of a number of photoelectric cells, when
an object breaks one or more of the beams a stop signal send to
the controller unit. We chosen this equipment, because of:
accurate measurement [1], low price, very popular and easy to
maintain (not require lane closure), but the light curtain is
sensitive to heavy rain, dense fog [1] and people passing.
Therefore, we have combined the light curtain with and induction
loop to reject this weakness.
Induction loop: Induction loop based on the principle of the
change of inductance in a coil whose electro-magnetic field
interrupted by a metallic object. The coil is represented by special
cable loops installed in the pavement in the road. The electronics
unit transmits energy into the wire loops at frequencies between
10 kHz to 200 kHz, depending on the model [1]. The decreased
inductance actuates the electronics unit output relay or solid-state
optically isolated output, which sends a pulse to the controller
signifying the presence of a vehicle [1]. And the induction loop is
very simple to install and it is insensitive to inclement weather
such as rain, fog, and provides best accuracy for count data as
compared with other commonly used techniques [1]. Therefore,
we have chosen the induction loop for the vehicle detection in our
ALPR system.
Controller units: We have used a Programmable Logic Controller
(PLC) to receive and process the signals from electronics unit
output relay of the light curtain & induction loop. Because of the
PLC is very popular, easy to maintain the system, low price and
very stable in the industry environment. The signals from PLC
will be sent to Computer through RS232 standard.
Infrared camera: To obtain higher accuracy of ALPR, the camera
need to provide a constant level and direction of illumination
irrespective of any conditions, but environment at the toll gate
very complex with a huge variety of lighting conditions such as:
daytime, night-time, sunlight, backlight, headlights, and weather
conditions, etc. Therefore, cameras must be rugged and
weatherproof for outdoor, these cameras should be specifically
designed to accommodate varying lighting conditions (such as
through IR illumination or wide-dynamic functionality) [28] and
the camera must be sensitive to the infrared part of the spectrum,
to at least 850 nanometres and fitted with a filter to restrict the
visible part of the spectrum. The lens would have a set fully open
and the shutter speed to 1/1000th second and an infrared source
must fitted adjacent to the camera [27]. Therefore, taking
advantage of the retro-reflective characteristics of number plates,
the illumination from the illuminator will be reflected directly
back to the camera, only infrared light will be seen without any
visible light or other reflections or refractions. The picture will of
course be black with no detail except for the number plate [27].
Therefore, we have chosen an infrared camera to capture an image
that has high enough quality to allow for the location of the
license plate data. According to all of above reasons, we have
chosen an infrared camera for our ALPR system.
Frame grabber (image acquisition card): Frame grabbers were
the predominant way to interface cameras to the Computer, it is an
electronic device that captures individual, digital still frames from
an analog video signal or a digital video stream. The video frames
captured in digital form and then displayed and stored as image,
and these images are used for the ALPR software. We will choose
frame grabber typically can store multiple frames and can capture
images at high frame rates and resolutions, RGB digital image is
108
saved into frame and read into EMS memory through PCI [4],
better the quality of the input images are, the better conditions the
license plate recognition algorithm has [1].
Computer: Computer is used for ALPR software & data storing,
vehicle images captured by capture software module through
frame grabber & infrared camera will be used for ALPR software.
Results of recognition are number plates and other information
(date, time, lane number, category, etc), these information will be
stored in hardware disk of this computer for fee calculation of
one-stop ETC & non-stop ETC. These vehicle images, number
plate and other data will be sent to central server in the Central
Building of the ETC system for the further processing.
2.2 Information flow
The information flow in our ALPR system could be described
such as in the Figure. 2.
Figure.2. Information flow of our proposed ALPR system
When a vehicle come to the toll gate lanes, it will be detected by
the light curtain and the induction loop, this signals from these
equipments will be sent to the controller unit 1 and controller unit
2 and then send to the PLC for processing, and then send to
Computer through RS322 standard. This signal used as an input
for image capture software on the PC to capture vehicle images
from infrared camera through frame grabber. These images used
for the ALPR software to recognize license plate. Results of
recognition is number plates and other information (date, time,
lane number, category, etc) will be stored in hardware disk of this
computer for fee calculation of one-stop ETC & non-stop ETC,
and these vehicle images, number plate and other data will be sent
to central server for further processing of overall ETC system
2.3 Infrared cameras & lenses.
There are usually physical limitations as far as plates or cameras
are concerned, which could affect the outcome of a supposedly
automated system. The paint, rust or frame of a plate can easily
interfere with the recognition process, so these need to be taken
2.4 Position & angle of infrared camera
The positioning of the camera is a important consideration for
satisfactory operation. Mount the camera in such a way that an
ideal image of the license plate captured when the license plate is
in the centre of the recorded image. The maximum vertical view
angle of a camera used for ALPR is 30 degrees, and the maximum
horizontal view angle is 25 degrees. In most systems, the
horizontal angle is somewhere between 15 and 20 degrees [28].
On the single lane, probably the best position is for a camera and
illuminator in a 1m high bollard viewing directly at the
approaching vehicle [27].
3. ALPR SOFTWARE
This paper proposed an improved Automatic License Plate
Recognition (ALPR) system for all types of Vietnam License
Plate (LP), which included of three modules: license plate location
(LPL), characters segmentation & characters recognition as Fig. 3.
Figure.3. The ALPR software of proposed method
3.1 License plate location
Pre-processing: Firstly, the origin RGB image in Fig. 4(a) is
converted to grayscale image by forming a weighted sum of the R,
G, and B components as Eq.1, result is Fig. 4(b).
Y 0.2989* R  0.5870*G  0.1140* B (1)
Secondly, we use morphological opening on the grayscale image,
it is efficiency for the image subtraction step, with the structuring
element (SE=25) according to Eq. (2), result is Fig. 4(c).
A B ( A4B) † B (2)
Thirdly, we used image subtraction on grayscale image. The pixel
subtraction operator takes two images as input and output image
having pixel values are of the first image is Fig. 4(c) minus the
corresponding pixel values of second image is Fig. 4(b) as Eq. (3),
f1 ( x, y ) , f 2 ( x, y ) are input, g ( x, y ) is output, result is Fig. 4(d).
into consideration during the design phase, picking adequate
cameras and positioning them right seem to be equally important,
picking adequate cameras and positioning them right seem to be
equally important [28]. In the non-stop ETC, shutter time should
be set to short when detecting moving vehicles, we need to make
sure the processing is done within this timeframe to be able to
catch every car in real time, camera also have to be installed in the
road to capture video frames at the correct time. To avoid
g  x, y  f1  x, y   f2  x, y  (3)
Then, we convert to binary image use Otsu Method by Eq. (4). T
is some global threshold that defined by Otsu's method,
computing a global threshold used to convert an intensity image to
a binary image, which chooses the threshold to minimize the
intraclass variance of the black & white pixels, result is Fig. 4(e).
overexposure, we used a camera with wide-dynamic functionality ­ 1 if  x, y  t T
[28]. There are many other factors to be considered in the g  x, y  ® (4)
selection of lens and the distance to view the vehicle depend on ¯0 otherwise
the size and types of license plate on vehicle, the size of the License plate candidate location: Firstly, we use edge Detection
number plate and the actual characters need to be of a certain size with Canny operator, the unit edge normal given by
when seen by the camera for the ALPR software to function [27].
R( x ) R( x ) . This method is search for maxima in the
n ( x ) R(
n(

109
directional image derivative in the direction n
n(( x ) . Search for
local maxima of gradient magnitude S ( x ) R( x ) in the direction
normal to local edge, nn(( x ) , suppressing all responses except for
local maxima, result is Fig. 4(f). Secondly, we used closing
operation to merge structures on a binary image, the closing of A
by B is obtained by the dilation of A by B, followed by erosion of
the resulting structure by B as Eq. (5), where 4 and † denote
erosion & dilation, output image is Fig. 4(g)
A B ( A † B)4B (5)
Thirdly, we use opening operation to remove noises on binary
image, their pixel area on binary image that all connected
components that fewer than [7 25] pixels to remove all of the
regions (noises) that is not LP candidates, output image is Fig.
4(h). Then, we used dilation operation to increase objects in the
binary images, the positions where a given structure element fits.
The dilation of A by the structuring element B is defined by
Eq.(6). It turns on pixels which were near pixels that were on
originally, thickening the items in the image, result is Fig. 4(i).
A† B Ab (6)
bB
Finally, we fixed the LP region by measure properties of each
connected components, the fields of the structure array denote
different properties for each region. Selecting the LP from the
candidates by chosen area that is the deepest region in the frame
which has properties of the LP area, then find a set the coordinates
of the LP region, result is Fig. 4(k).
License plate exact location: Firstly, we find the angle & rotate
Figure.4. origin RGB image, b) gray-scale image, c)
morphology opening image, d) subtracted image, e) binary
image, f) edge detected by Canny method, g) morphology
closing image, h) morphology opening to remove noises, i)
dilating image, k) license plate candidate, l) angle of license
plate, m) image after rotating, n) after cut exactly LP region.
3.2 Characters segmentation
Pre-processing task: Quantization on gray image in Fig. 4(n), a
black & white image determined by an adaptive threshold, we
obtained Fig. 5(a). Then, the image is resized in parameter 50x150
pixels for one-row LP and 100x100 pixels for two-row LP, we
obtained Fig. 5(b). Determining the LP horizontal contours by
computing the sum of the lines in Fig. 5(b), and in the
complement of image, 0 become 1 and 1 become 0, black and
white are reversed. Each pixel is subtracted from the maximum
pixel value and the difference is used as the pixel value in the
output image, we obtained Fig. 5(c). Using morphology opening
on binary image to remove all connected components (noises)
fewer than 10 pixels for one-row LP & two-row LP, we obtained
Fig. 5(d).
Segmentation task: Firstly, a method is applied to segment two
lines of the two-row LP. And then, we apply segmentation
algorithm for every line in the one-row LP & two-row LP by
segmentation algorithm, which use a method called “peak-to-
valley” on binary image to segment characters in every line of the
Vietnam LP, characters and numbers zone is detected using peak
to valley function as Eq. (9).
 
V l p  2 * V  x   V ( rp )
Vp( x ) (9)
LP by apply the radon transform on an image f ( x, y) for a given
set of angles can be thought of as computing the projection of the
image along the given angles U , result is a new image R( U , T )
with lines in the Fig. 4(l).
V  x  1
where, Vp(x) is the vertical projection function at current x
location, lp is peak position on the left side of x, rp is the peak
position on the right side of x. We search changes between peaks
and valleys, and then count number of black pixels per column in
U x*cos T   y*sin(T ) (7) the projection. After segmentation, we have results such as Fig.5.
f f

R  U ,T  ³ ³ f  x, y  G  ȡ  xcosș  ysinș  dxdy
f f
Secondly, we rotate LP by the interpolation method specified by
bilinear interpolation, after rotating, we obtained the Fig. 4(m).
Lastly, we cut exactly LP region by finding the coordinates of the
LP rectangle, then we have four-element position vector [xmin ymin
width height], that specifies size & position of the crop rectangle,
result in the Fig. 4(n).
(8)
Figure.5. a) after quantization, b) after resizing, c) after
horizontal contours & imcomplement, d) after remove noises,
e) result of characters segmentation for one-row of Vietnam
LP f) result of characters segmentation for two-row of
Vietnam LP.
3.3 Characters recognition
We proposed an improved method, which used a Multi Layer
Perceptron (MLP) neural network and back-propagation algorithm
to recognize letters & numbers of Vietnam LP. Datasets for
training and testing are obtained from Vietnam LP images, which
obtained in the actual system, 10 numbers (0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8,
9) and 15 letters (F, H, K, L, M, N, P, R, S, T, U, V, X, Y, Z) of
Vietnam LP for training of the MLP network such as table 2. All
of letters & numbers were resized in (10x20) pixels for training.
We used this size for samples in the training network, because of
with this size we have saved the computing time for training and
using network, so the computing time of characters recognition is
improved.
110
Training network: We will use two networks for letters & vqj (k  1) vqj (k )  K
G nq (k )
x j (k ) (19)
numbers training with noises, in each network we will adjust the
weights of each unit in such a way that the error between the where, , q 1, 2,...l , j 1, 2,...m
desired output and the actual output is reduced, we compute the
error derivative of the weights. In other words, it must calculate
G nq ( k ) ¦ n

i 1 oi

G ( k ) Wiq ( k ) a c  netq( k ) 

¦  y
how the error changes as each weight is increased or decreased
 
n
slightly, the MLP network trained with input vector X i and G (k ) Wiq (k ) 1  ynq (20)
i 1 oi nq

desired output D j , m input layers (m=200), l hidden layers was where, i 1, 2,...n
picked by guesswork and experience (l=10), n output layers (n=15 Step 5: If the E < Emax then end, else if we give k=1 and E=0 and
for letters recognition, n = 10 for numbers recognition). return step 1.

Step 1: Read input vector X i (letters & numbers), all samples are We will create a network can handle noisy input vectors, so the
network first trained on input vectors and then the network is
(10x20) pixels and recorded in a two dimensions array [10 20].
trained on noisy input. After training is done using back-
Clear all previous values, and then initialize the weights vectors
propagation with 932 epochs or until the network sum-squared
Wqj , Wiq , biases, learning rate K , error max Emax , k=1 and E=0. error falls beneath 0.001 (10-3), we have neural network training
performance as Fig. 6(a).
Step 2: Computing for actual output of network from input signal
of hidden layer (Eq.10), output signal of hidden layer (Eq.11), Testing network: In the testing of MLP network, the reliability of
input signal of output layer (Eq.12), final we have output signal of the neural network characters & numbers recognition system is
output layer is Eq.13 measured by testing the network with hundreds of input vectors
with varying quantities of noises. Testing of the network at
¦ various noise levels, noise with a mean of 0 and a standard
m
netq v xj (10)
j 1 qj deviation from 0 to 1 is added to the input vectors. The output of
zq a(netq) (1  enetq ) (1  enetq ) (11) the MLP network is then passed through the competitive transfer
function so that only one of the 15 outputs (representing the
¦ characters), has a value of 1. The solid line on the graph in the
l
neti wiq zq (12)
q 1 Fig. 6(b) shows the reliability for the network trained with and
 neti  neti without noise. The reliability of the same network when it had
yi a(neti ) (1  e ) (1  e ) (13)
only been trained without noise is shown with a dashed line in the
Step 3: Computing for squared errors according to Eq.14 Fig. 6(b).
1 Using network: After training and testing, we will use two trained
¦
n 2
E ( w) ( d i  yi ) (14)
2 i 1 networks to recognize all of the characters and numbers of
Step 4: Update of weigh matrix according to Eq.15, and then Vietnam LP. Before put characters & numbers in to the trained
based on the gradient method with delta rule in the Eq.(16). network, we will use the image processing technology for pre-
processing to obtain high quality of characters & numbers (dilate
W (k  1) W (k )  'wiq (k ) (15) the supplied image using a structuring element whose width is 2
pixels). For the characters recognition, the target vectors defined
K (wE K ¨ wE
§ wyi wneti · with a variable called target, each target vector is a 15-element
wwiq ¸¹
'wiq ( k ) )
wwiq © wyi wneti (16) vector with a 1 in the position of the character it represents, and
K ( d i  yi ) * a c( neti ) z q 0’s everywhere else as. For the numbers recognition, the target
vectors defined with a variable called target, each target vector is
wyi
¦ a 10-element vector with a 1 in the position of the number it
l
where, wE ( d i  yi ) , a( wiq zq ) c ,
wyi wneti q 1 represents, 0’s everywhere else, we obtained results such as in
wneti Fig. 6(c,d).
zq .
wwiq

We computed weights values between hidden layer & output

layers is updated by Eq.(17) and G oi (k ) is error of output of
output layer, this error will be calculate according to Eq.(18)
Wiq ( k  1) Wiq ( k )  K G oi (k ) zq (k ) (17)
where, q 1, 2,...l , i 1, 2,...n

G oi (k )  di (k )  yi (k )  yi (k ) ac  neti(k ) 
 di (k )  yi (k )  yi (k ) 1  yi (k )  (18)
where, i 1, 2,...n

Weights values between input layer & hidden layers is updated by Figure.6. (a) MLP network training performance, (b) testing
Eq.(19) and G nq (k ) is error of output of hidden layer will be of trained network for characters, (c) results for one-row
calculate according to Eq.(20). Vietnam LP, (d) results for two-row Vietnam LP.

111
3.4 ALPR database management In the characters recognition module: For the training work, we
ALPR database will be stored & managed in the Computer by a have used two networks for characters & numbers training with
local Microsoft Office Access database. Results of recognition is noises, so the computing time and accuracy improved. In the
number plates and other information (date, time, lane number, using network work, we have used the image processing
categories, etc) will be stored and already to provide for fee technology for pre-processing to obtain high quality of characters
calculation of one-stop ETC & non-stop ETC. One HMI of & numbers before put in the trained network, so accuracy rate of
software should be able to provide a transmission for monitor the the system is higher than some previous methods, we can see in
vehicle passing by, browse the database, query any vehicles and the Table 1.
customize the system settings and through storing data that In Table 2, we have results for the testing of the overall ALPR
enables more advanced data analysis and sharing in the central system, we see that the average accuracy of the overall ALPR
server for further processing of overall ETC system. system is very high.
4. EXPERIMENTS RESULTS Table 2. Results of Our Overall System
We implemented experiment with PC Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo Correc Error Accuracy Averag
CPU T7250 @2.00GHz, RAM 1.00 GB, Windows Vista Version Image
Type of LP t rate rate rate (%) e rate
6.1 (Build 7600) 32-bit Operating System and MATLAB Version total
(%)
7.8.0.347 (R2009a). We tested 700 Vietnam vehicle images (400 One-row LP 700 683 17 97.57
one-row type, 300 two-row type), which obtained from the actual 97.43
Two-row LP 700 681 19 97.28%
system, these vehicle images are very different background such
In Table 3, we have compared results of our proposed method to
as illumination, license angles, size and type, dimensions from
the previous methods, we see that the accuracy rate of our method
camera to vehicles, colors, light conditions in Vietnam
is higher than most of previous works and the computing time of
environment, these vehicle images are RGB true-color image and
our method is improved. But these comparisons is only for
in two format (800x600 pixels and 768x288 pixels).
references, because of our method and previous methods are not
In the license plate location module, most of the previous methods evaluated on the same conditions and data images.
have some restricted in case: uncertainty of edges, various types
Table 3. Comparison results of Our method to some Previous
of plate, low or high illuminated images, colors, sun light & night
Methods
light. But these limitations were solved by our proposed method,
because of these reasons such as. The first reason – we have used Image Correct Error rateAverage Computing
Methods
subtract operation on the gray-scale image to obtain a better image total rate rate (%) time (s)
with new intensity values that satisfied for the image binarization, Our method 700 682 18 97.43% 0.25
this is reason why our proposed method is very efficiency for Ref. [4] No No No 90-97 0.1 – 1.5
complex background images, night & day images and different Ref. [5] 1000 965 35 96.50 No
illuminations. The second reason – we have chosen the good Ref. [6] 351 344 7 98.00 No
structuring element values (SE=25) in the morphological opening Ref. [7] 1334 1307 26 86.00 No
step and connected components value [7 25] pixels to remove all Ref. [8] 795 738 57 92.85 No
of the regions (noises) that is not license plate candidates. The Ref. [9] 141 128 13 91.00 No
third reason – we have chosen the good values in the fixing the LP Ref. [11] No No No 98.00 0.5
region step, this values satisfied for Vietnam LP dimensions. We Ref. [15] 306 268 38 87.44 No
see that, the accuracy rate of our method is very high such as Ref. [17] No No No 97.00 <3.0
Table 1.
Ref. [19] 9026 8731 295 96.73 0.284
Table 1. Results Of LP Location Task, LP Segmentation Task, Ref. [20] 387 379 18 98.00 No
LP Recognition Task Fig. 7 and Fig. 8 show some experiment result examples of our
ALPR system. We see that, our method is very satisfied for the
LP LP
LP Location Vietnam vehicle images, which obtained from the actual system,
Segmentation Recognition
these vehicle images are very different background such as
One Two One Two One Two
illumination, license angles, LP angle, size and type, dimensions
row row row row row row
from camera to vehicles, colors, light conditions in Vietnam
Image 400 300 400 300 400 300
environment. These vehicle images are RGB true-color image and
Accuracy rate in two format (800x600 pixels and 768x288 pixels). Fig. 7 is
97.25 97.00 98.75 97.67 97.50 97.00
(%) some results of one-row Vietnam LP image and Fig. 8 is some
Average rate results of two-row Vietnam LP image.
97.13 98.21 97.25
(%)
In the segmentation module, most of the previous methods only
applied for the one-row LP. In this paper, we have proposed an
improved method to segment characters & numbers in one-row &
two-row types of Vietnam LP based on the peak-to-valley method
& statistical parameters of characters and digits. And combined
pre-processing to improved image quality and remove noise, our
approach could applied for both one-row and two-row type of
Vietnam LP and the accuracy rates of our method is very high 
such as Table 1.
D

112
  
E G
Figure.8. Some results of two-row Vietnam LP
5. CONCLUSIONS
In this paper, we proposed a method to design an ALPR system,
which applied for one-stop and non-stop Toll Collection System
in Vietnam. Our ALPR system consists of two major parts: the
first part is hardware system and the second part is software. In
the first part, the price, types of equipments and technology
 considered for designing which satisfied for Vietnam environment,
F Vietnam regulation in the road pricing rules and Vietnam standard
of ETC. In the second part, we combined digital image processing
technology and artificial neural network, our software include
four modules: image capture, license plate location, characters
segmentation and characters recognition. We tested our ALPR
software by 700 Vietnam vehicle images, which obtained from
actual system and complex background: lightening conditions
(night & day), license angles, illumination, size and type, colors
and reflected light. Our ALPR software is more effective than
 some existing methods, the computing time & accuracy is
G improved and very satisfied for all types of Vietnam LP and
Figure. 7. Some results for one-row of Vietnam LP Vietnam environment. Our ALPR could be used for one-stop &
non-stop ETC in Vietnam. But in the future work, we are still
research to improve our algorithm to make our ALPR system
faster and more accuracy and we will implement tested our ALPR
system in the actual one-stop ETC and non-stop ETC in Vietnam.

6. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This work was supported by National Natural Science Foundation
of China (Serial No. 60970061, 61075056), and the Fundamental
Research Funds for the Central Universities.
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