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Optimization of ANPR algorithm on android mobile phone

Conference Paper · November 2013

DOI: 10.1109/ICSIMA.2013.6717950

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 Proc. of the IEEE International Conference on Smart Instrumentation, Measurement and Applications (ICSIMA)
26-27 November 2013, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Optimization of ANPR Algorithm

on Android Mobile Phone
Abdul Mutholib#1, Teddy S. Gunawan#2, Jalel Chebil#3, Mira Kartiwi*4
#
Electrical Computer Engineering Department, International Islamic University Malaysia
P.O. Box 10, 50728 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
1antholib@gmail.com

2tsgunawan@iium.edu.my

3jalel@iium.edu.my

*
Information System Department, International Islamic University Malaysia
P.O. Box 10, 50728 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
4mira@iium.edu.my

Abstract— Since the past decades, many researchers proposed localization step as we can capture only the number plate using
their methods to recognize the vehicle number plate. One of the Android mobile phone’s camera.
methods is template matching which is executed in the optical
character recognition (OCR) step of the automatic number plate
recognition (ANPR) system. In previous researches, many TABLE I. ANDROID MOBILE PHONE SPECIFICATION DETAILS
researchers are used a high end desktop PC and high resolution Component Specification
camera to implement the ANPR system. In this paper, the CPU 800 MHz 1 Core ARM v6
optimization of ANPR algorithm on limited hardware of Android GPU Adreno 200
mobile phone is presented. First, various steps to optimize ANPR Chipset Qualcomm MSM7227
and OCR block using template matching are described. Our Memory 278.34 MB
proposed algorithm was based on Tesseract library. For ROM 178.39 MB
comparison purpose, the template matching based OCR will be Network Data 2G / 3G / HSDPA 7.2
compared to Artificial Neural Network (ANN) based OCR. The OS Android 2.3.7
optimization on ANPR was performed as currently there is no Screen size 3.5 inch
LCD technology TFT 16M colors multi touchscreen
image processing tool available on the standard Android mobile
Resolution HVGA (480 x 320) ~165 ppi pixel density
phone. By optimization of ANPR, many advantages could be
Camera Resolution 5 MP (2592x1944 pixels)
achieved, such as higher recognition accuracy, less resource Digital/Optical Zoom Up to 2x digital zoom
consumption, and less computational complexity. Results on 30 Shot Mode Single / Smile / Continuous / Panorama
images showed that the recognition rate was 97.46% while the Photo Effects Normal / Negative / B&W / Sepia
processing time was 1.13. White Balance Auto / Daylight / Cloudy / Incandescent /
Fluorescent
Keywords— ANPR; Template Matching; ANN; OCR; GPS AGPS
Android Wi-Fi 802.11b/g/n

I. INTRODUCTION
Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) is simply
the combination of hardware and software which have the
ability to read the character and number on the vehicle’s
license plate. Commonly, the ANPR systems are used in
various access control and traffic law enforcement, namely toll
gate access, parking area access, speed trap and traffic light
tress passing [1]. There are numerous algorithms that can be
used to improve the accuracy and processing time of ANPR,
such as RGB or YCbCr, image binarization, image filter, fuzzy
algorithm, template matching and neural network [2].
Generally, the ANPR system works in five steps, image
acquisition, image pre-processing, number plate localization,
character segmentation and the last is optical character
recognition (OCR) to recognize the individual character with
the help of database stored for each and every alphanumeric
character [3]. In this paper we eliminate the number plate
ANPR as an intelligent device which is eradicating the need
of human involvement, it obliges to have a high accuracy
degree. There are numerous of variable that need to be paid an
attention for gaining a high accuracy of the number plate
recognition, for example, time of day, weather and angles
between the cameras and the license plates [1]. Android as the
popular mobile operating system has capability to complement
those variables. Android offers open development environment
which is built on open-source Linux kernel. Accessing the
hardware resources is available to all applications through the
API libraries. The third-party and native Android applications
are constructed with the same APIs and executed on the same
run time. Developers can eliminate and replace any native
application with a third-party developer alternative [4]. The
specification of the Android mobile phone used in this research
can be seen in Table 1.
Minimalizing the computational cost, maximizing the
recognition result and recognition time are the main objectives

978-1-4799-0843-1/13/$31.00 ©2013 IEEE

of this paper. To achieve those goals, optimization of template
matching algorithm for ANPR implemented on Android
mobile phone is proposed.
II. EXISTING ANPR METHOD
The successful of the number plate recognition is depend
on the correctly of the As a component of an ANPR system,
successful character recognition on a number plate is to
correctly specify the each component of the number plate
either as the character on the number plate from A to Z or as a
digit number from 0 to 9. In this section, the existing methods
which are handles the each of process of a character
recognition system will be presented. In addition, the reviews
of some well-known method for character recognition will
discuss in this section. The common processes of ANPR are
consists of following five steps. There are image acquisition,
pre-processing, feature extraction, segmentation, and
recognition as shown in Fig. 1.
Start
Image acquisition
Image pre-processing
Feature extraction
Character segmentation
Optical character recognition
Stop
Fig. 1. General ANPR Process
A. Image Acuisition
Image acquisition is first important step for the ANPR
system. It is due to this step offers the input image for the
whole process in the ANPR system. The previous researchers
used many capture method. In paper published by Maarif and
Sardy [5], they used digital camera to acquire license plate. The
infrared lighting that embedded in camera was presented in
Badr et. al. paper [6]. In another paper published by Kim et. al.
[7] and Yan et. al. [8] were presented a video camera to
capture the number plate image.
B. Image Pre-processing
The objective of this step is to increase the image quality
especially to sharpen the edge features of the image. Numerous
methods were proposed by many researchers for the pre-
processing step. For example, Khalifa et. al. [9] enhance the
input image by convert it to gray scale by taking the luminance
component of National Television System Committee (NTSC)
standard method.
Duan et. al. [10] used detection method based on the
boundary features. The method sequentially consists of graying
the image, normalizing the image using Sobel filters to extract
the edging image and histogram equalization using adaptive
thresholding algorithm to binarize the image.
Finally, Yo-Ping Huang et. al. [11] used Gaussian filter in
order to smooth the image for reduction influences noises. It
will make the pixels near the center of image have higher value
than the pixels far for the center of the image. To enhance the
contrast of the image, they used Power Law transformation.
C. Feature Extraction
In humans’ perception, a number plate is a small of plastic
or metal plate patch to a vehicle for official identification
purposes. However, the machines do not understand this
description as well as they do not understand what vehicle, or
whatever else is. In consequence, the alternative way of
description of a number plate is needed by the machines.
Kim et. al. [7] in their paper showed the alternative way to
teach the machine what and where is the number plate. The
methods they used for this stage are two Neural Network-based
filters as an input and a post processor to combine the two
filters images in order to locate the license plate. The filter that
used in two Neural Networks are vertical and horizontal filters,
which observe small windows of vertical and horizontal cross
sections of an image and resolve whether each window
contains a license plate. Cross-sections have adequate data for
differentiating a plate from the background.
Duan et. al. [10] proposed the combination of the Hough
Transform and Contour algorithm that produces higher
accuracy and fast processing, thus can be implemented into real
time system. While Badr et. al. [6] were applying Sobel vertical
edge detection, threshold and doing a vertical projection (Y-
axis) in sequent. The process will produce the strongest peak.
The image will cut according the range of this peak.
D. Character Segmentation
Many different methods for character segmentation have
been proposed in the previous researches and some of them are
as follows.
Khalifa et. al. [9] used Connected-Component which is
following the four steps to segment the character of the license
plate. The first step is stretching the contrast of the image to
extend over the entire range of gray levels available (0-225).
The next step is threshold the image using Otsu method.
Thirdly, search for connected components in the image and
assign a special label for each connected component. Finally,
resize each character from previous step to the standard size
(20x10) to be used for next step recognition process.
Duan et. al [10] used a horizontal projection for detecting
and segmenting rows in two rows plates and vertical projection
for character segmentation. While, Maarif and Sardi [5] used
thin window scanning with the size of partition 56 x 1 pixels.
They divided the plate into three blocks. First, block contained
letter which corresponds to area domain of the car. Second,
block contains number and the last is block contained letter.
E. Optical Character Recognition
Optical character recognition (OCR) is the process to
convert the images of handwritten, or typewritten into machine
encoded text. In the previous researches, there are numerous
methods such as Euclidean distance [12], Hidden Markov
Model (HMM) [10], Artificial Neural Network (ANN) [13]
[14] [9], Support Vector Machine (SVM) [15] and template
matching [16] [17].
III. OPTIMIZATION
The optimization implies to the best meet of the criteria set
for character recognition. The most common used criterion for
the evaluation of the classification method is the accuracy. One
more criterion is the permanence. An algorithm is considered
has the good performance if it always achieved a better result
for various sets of input data. The cost of acquiring data or the
cost of classification errors and the computational complexity
are the other of the criteria.
The optimization is not relying on separate step of the
ANPR process. It is based on the set of auxiliary method which
is supporting in every process step as shown in Fig. 2.
Start
Image Acquisition
Optimization
Image Pre-Processing
Character Segmentation
Character Recognition
Stop
Fig. 2. Optimization of ANPR Process
As can be seen in Fig. 2, optimization guarantees that each
input plate number image has to have the best meet criteria for
the next process. In the image acquisition, we take a 600x480
pixels image of the number plate. For optimize the next process
and reduce the computational complexity, we convert the
picture to 8bit image. By doing this, we also gain high speed
processing and low cost of resources.
(a)
(b) (c) (d)
Fig. 3. Imag pre-processing optimization, (a) original image, (b) unsharp
masking, (c) inverting, (d) binnarizing
In the pre-processing image, optimal process methods have
to perform sequentially (see Fig. 3), such as unsharp masking
method for edge enhancing, inverting the background and
foreground colors and finally binarizing the image using Otsu
algorithm due to remove the noise.
In the character segmentation step, the optimization is
accomplished by detecting the skew of image and performed
the fixed pitch detection and chopping method (see Fig. 4). It
can determine whether the text lines are fixed pitch. Where it
finds fixed pitch text, it will chop the words into characters
using the pitch, and restricts the chopper and associates on
these character for the word recognition step [18].
Fig. 4. Character segmentation optimization
Finally, in the optical character recognition we proposed
the template matching algorithm. As the description in
Brunelli’s book [19], the template matching technique can be
illustrated as vector in Fig. 5. A planar distribution of light
intensity values is converted into a vector x that can be
compared, in a coordinate-wise mode to a spatially
corresponding light distribution similarly represented by vector
y.
Based on the description above, Brunelli stated that a major
issue in template matching is the consistency of match scores
with deference to noise extended to include un-modeled
occurrences. It is happen because a template may unveil some
inconsistency, not all of the instances are precisely identical.
Many commonly used estimators suffer from a lack of
robustness: small perturbations in the data can drive them
towards uninformative values [19].
(60, 40, 20, 100, 20, ...)
x = (x1, x2, ...)
Fig. 5. Illustrated of template matching method as matix
If the matrix has countless coordinate, in the other word the
enormous number of sample points image for current
discussion, it can lead the inconsistency of the image identical.
To reduce this inconsistency, we need to reduce the resolution
of the image which is bring on the reducing the number of
sampling points. The reducing resolution of course based on
the training image. In this paper, we set the training image in
8bit. Hence, we need to convert the input image to 8bit.
Another optimization for template matching in our research
is limited the training and the input number plate image as
character A to Z and number 0 to 9. With the addition of this
limitation or we called it white list; the recognition process can
be speed up.
 IV. EXPERIMENTAL RESULT
The experiments have been performed to test the
performance of proposed optimization and to measure the
accuracy. The images for the input with the size 640x480
pixels converted to 8bit image. The test images were taken
under various time, conditions and angle. As the result of the
implementation the proposed algorithm on Android mobile
use of ANN in OCR step for the proposed algorithm is not
significantly improves the recognition rate. It only gained
60.95% with the longest recognition time around 53.97
seconds.
TABLE III. OPTIMIZATION ANPR RESULT USING TEMPLATE MATCHING
AS OCR

phone, it can be seen in Fig. 6. Recognized Processing Recognizing

No Plate
Output Time (ms) rate (%)
1 WAX5739 WAX5739 960 100.00%
TABLE II. ORIGINAL ANPR RESULT USING TEMPLATE MATHING AS
OCR 2 PDG7628 PDG7628 786 100.00%
Number Recognized Processing Recognition 3 BFP2569 BFP2569 754 100.00%
No
Plate Output Time (ms) rate (%) 4 WGA2761 WGA2761 1120 100.00%
1 WAX5739 1121 0.00% 5 MAH8015 MAH8015 996 100.00%
2 PDG7628 538 0.00% 6 MCH929 MCH929 954 100.00%
3 BFP2569 BFP2569 696 100.00% 7 WRF5851 WRF5851 904 100.00%
4 WGA2761 VIGA2761 3219 85.71% 8 CBS1300 CBSI300 972 85.71%
5 MAH8015 MAH8015 830 100.00% 9 MAP5384 HAP5384 908 85.71%
6 MCH929 MCHS29 1263 83.33% 10 WNM344 WNM344 888 100.00%
7 WRF5851 WKSS 1071 14.29% 11 CBT4465 CBT4465 988 100.00%
8 CBS1300 CBS1206 1016 71.43% 12 WVV7054 WVV7054 1157 100.00%
9 MAP5384 MAP5382 805 100.00% 13 MBG127 MBG127 1765 100.00%
10 WNM344 WNM344 812 100.00% 14 WGQ6464 WGQ6464 1332 100.00%
11 CBT4465 CBT4465 848 100.00% 15 WUT4251 WUT4251 1351 100.00%
12 WVV7054 WVV7054 732 100.00% 16 BJW3236 BJW322G 1585 100.00%
13 MBG127 MBG127 679 100.00% 17 WGQ7921 WGQ7921 1327 100.00%
14 WGQ6464 WGQ6464 1059 100.00% 18 KCM4303 KCM4303 1131 100.00%
15 WUT4251 UT4251 837 85.71% 19 WPM9605 WPM9605 1023 100.00%
16 BJW3236 BJWF323S 1454 85.71% 20 PKA4220 PKA4220 1082 100.00%
17 WGQ7921 WGQ7921 963 100.00% 21 BEN3688 BEN3688 1315 100.00%
18 KCM4303 KCM4303 883 100.00% 22 DBP8757 DBP8757 914 100.00%
19 WPM9605 WPM9805 811 85.71% 23 WDG292 1FWDCI1292 1230 66.67%
20 PKA4220 PKA4220 668 100.00% 24 WDB6306 WDB6306 1131 100.00%
21 BEN3688 BENY3688 772 85.71% 25 WPN1674 WPN1674 1435 100.00%
22 DBP8757 DBP8757 862 100.00% 26 WGF8459 WGF8459 1210 100.00%
23 WDG292 JIIDGI1292 1034 83.33% 27 WNX7895 WNX7895 890 100.00%
24 WDB6306 WDB6306 871 100.00% 28 AFW7480 AFW1480 1825 85.71%
25 WPN1674 QWPN1674 1189 85.71% 29 ABS1544 ABS1544 922 100.00%
26 WGF8459 WSFJE459 1265 71.43% 30 WWW8946 WWW8946 1145 100.00%
27 WNX7895 NNX7895 632 85.71% 1133.333 97.46%
28 AFW7480 AFW7480 816 100.00%
29 ABS1544 ABS1544 736 100.00%
30 WWW8946 QWWW8946 790 85.71%
975.7333 83.65%

The optimization of the proposed algorithm using Template

Matching in OCR step can be seen in Table III. It can be
compared to the original algorithm in the Table II and Table IV
for proposed algorithm with ANN in the OCR step.
It is shown that Table II achieved 83.65% for the accuracy
and gained 0.98 second for the recognition time. However,
after performed the optimization, the accuracy is significantly
increased up to 97.46% and unfortunately it was paid by the
recognition time at 1.13 second. In Table IV, it shows that the Fig. 6 ANPR recognition result shown on Android mobile phone
 TABLE IV. OPTIMIZATION ANPR RESULT USING ANN AS OCR REFERENCES
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