An Improved License Plate Location Method Based On Edge Detection

License plate location as one of the key steps in license plate recognition system, the positioning accuracy is direct impact on the effect of license plate recognition. In this paper, for the plate image that is under different backgrounds and lighting conditions, a license plate location method based on an improved prewitt arithmetic operator was proposed. Firstly, do improved prewitt operation on the preprocessed plate image. Then, use the characteristics of vehicle license, adopt the horizontal and vertical projection method to determine the location of the upper and lower edge around the edge position, in order to achieve the positioning of vehicle license. The experiments results show that the algorithm with high accuracy, positioning speed and have good practical value. (C) 2011 Published by Elsevier B.V. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of ICAPIE Organization Committee.