Automatic Number Plate Recognition Technology: Hikvision

HIKVISION
Automatic Number Plate

Recognition Technology
A universal and efficient algorithm
for global ANPR application
Table of Content
1. Background ............................................................................................................................... 3
2. Key Technologies ...................................................................................................................... 3
2.1. Plate Locating .............................................................................................................................. 4
2.1.1. Rough Locating ...............................................................................................................................4
2.1.2. False Plate Filtering ........................................................................................................................4
2.1.3. Fine Locating and Post Processing ...............................................................................................4
2.2. Character Partition ....................................................................................................................... 5
2.2.1. Rough Partition................................................................................................................................5
2.2.2. Fine Partition ...................................................................................................................................6
2.2.3. Bilayer Plate Processing .................................................................................................................6
2.3. Character Recognition ................................................................................................................. 7
3. Applications .............................................................................................................................. 8
AUTOMATIC NUMBER PLATE RECOGNITION TECHNOLOGY 2

1. BACKGROUND
With the vehicle applications gaining popularity in daily life, intelligent vehicle
management becomes important in many industries. Hikvision ANPR (Automatic Number
Plate Recognition) technology can detect and identify the vehicle’s unique license plate
number and is an important component of a sophisticated vehicle management system.
While Hikvision’s ANPR technology has been approved by many Chinese customers for its
high accuracy, lack of a universal license plate format in the overseas market presented a
great challenge. Hikvision’s ANPR technology was created to be applied globally in diverse
places since it does not rely on prior information (such as plate character structure, plate
color, etc.).
2. KEY TECHNOLOGIES
Hikvision ANPR technology is able to extract license plates from the complicated
background, separate and recognize each character on the plate, and reformat the plate
information. The technology consists of plate locating, character partitioning, and
character recognition. See the below diagram for the recognition example.
Original Figure
Plate Locating
Character Partitioning
Character Recognition
Figure 1 Plate Recognition Flow

2.1. PLATE LOCATING
Plate locating technology does not rely on the plate color or character structure, and can
locate monolayer (single section) and bilayer (dual section) plates. The plate locating
procedure consists of rough locating, false plate filtering, fine locating, and post
processing.
2.1.1. ROUGH LOCATING

The rough locating procedure works based on the characteristic that the contrast between
plate characters and the plate background is very pronounced. It searches the part that
matches with the feature in the image to locate the license plate.
Figure 2 Rough Locating Result
2.1.2. FALSE PLATE FILTERING

Because the surveillance environment might be complex and contain plate-like parts (such
as vehicle wheels as shown in Figure 2 and other items), false plate information should be
filtered from the rough locating result by confirming that the textural features of the
located part correspond with an actual plate.
Figure 3 False Plate Filtering Result
2.1.3. FINE LOCATING AND POST PROCESSING

The edge of the rough located part is not as accurate as that of the actual plate, the plate
is precisely locate by analyzing the discriminating features between it and the
background, , as shown in the following figure.
Figure 4 Fine Locating Result
Furthermore, to finely locate the main section (the section has more characters) of the
multi-sectioned license plate (in the following figure, the content marked by the red frame
is the main section), we post-process the license to determine the accurate border of the
main section by using the Hikvision character detection algorithm.

Figure 5 Bilayer License Plate
2.2. CHARACTER PARTITIONING

Since the plate locating has now obtained the upper and lower borders of the plate
characters, the remaining problem is determining the left and right borders of each
character. Here are the common character partition (character’s circumscribed rectangle)
methods and their advantages and disadvantages.
 Vertical Projection
This technique finds the wave troughs by observing the projections. Wave troughs are
the spaces between the characters, which are used to locate and partition off every
character. However, this method cannot judge where the left border of the first
character is. Other methods should be combined to find the plate’s left and right
borders.
 CCL (Connected Component Labeling)
Every character is a connected region or has a part that is connected. We can cut the
connected region out of the image to get the shape of the character. But in actual
application, an excessive noise may degrade the regions of different characters and
interfere with identifying the character partition.
 Template Matching
After using character partition methods such as vertical projection, template matching
can be applied to locate the character position precisely with the known character
order structure and effectively decrease the character partition errors. However, since
the worldwide plate types vary, template matching is unreliable.
To solve the universality problem of the character partition algorithm, Hikvision developed
an algorithm that combines Vertical Projection and CCL to roughly part the characters,
another method to finely part the characters, and a special strategy to identify all the
borders of characters on the multi-section plates. Therefore, Hikvision’s character partition
algorithm is suitable for global application.
2.2.1. ROUGH PARTITION

During the rough partition procedure, Hikvision first uses the CCL estimate the character
width and spaces between characters, and then introduces Vertical Projection to roughly
locate the characters and their left and right borders. Hikvision algorithm guarantees the
excellent application university at the beginning.

2.2.2. FINE PARTITION
Since there are possible problems left by the rough partition such as one character
separated into two or more, two characters combined into one, diverse character widths,
and inter-embedded characters, Hikvision develops a fine partition algorithm with the most
advanced technology, which is a core part of the ANPR technology.
1) To finely separate complicated characters problems such as one character separated

into two, or two characters combined into one, the algorithm separates characters
based on different preprocessed pictures (such as greyscale picture, outline drawing,
etc.), compares the results, and selects the result with the highest confidence
coefficient.
2) Hikvision’s character detection algorithm is used to identify characters with unequal

widths. As shown in the following figure, the characters marked with blue rectangle are
the partition result that has eliminated the unequal width influence.
Figure 6 Partition Result of Characters with Unequal Width (Front Part)
3) The inter-embedded characters, such as the “7” and “4” in the following figure, are
regarded as one character after the rough partition and affect the recognition
accuracy. Hikvision introduces the Hikvision Block Analysis Technology to finely
partition every character.
Figure 7 Inter-Embedded Characters
2.2.3. BILAYER PLATE PROCESSING

This technique uses a categorizer to distinguish the bilayer plate. If the plate is a bilayer
plate, Hikvision has a special processing strategy that locates the minor layer (with fewer
characters) based on the located main layer (with more characters) and completes the
character partition.
In most cases, the main layer is located lower than the minor layer; however, in some
regions, the positions of the main layer and the minor layer are reversed, as shown in the
following figure.
Figure 8 The Main Layer is in the Upper Position
To maintain compatibility with both kinds of bilayer plates, an “internal adjustment

measure” is adopted: after locating the two layers of the plate, it will always start the
partition from the lower layer. This measure can speed up the processing efficiency for
bilayer plate.
2.3. CHARACTER RECOGNITION

Hikvision’s character recognition algorithm is based on a machine learning neural network
algorithm. Compared to the traditional recognition algorithm, it has advantages that it has
a character authenticity identification module and supports various kinds of characters
recognition, including Arabic numerals, English characters, Chinese characters, Korean
characters, Thai characters, Japanese characters, etc. It works according to the below
flow diagram.
Get the greyscale of

Start each parted
character
Character
Character
Authenticity
Recognition
Identification
Composite all the

Select a most
recognition results of
accurate one and
character into a
output
complete one
End
Figure 9 Character Recognition Flow
Because the Hikvision ANPR algorithm is suitable for the global application, many non-
character may be separated in the partition process, such as the plate frame and heat
dissipation area in the vehicle nose. To improve the recognition efficiency, the false
information is filtered by implementing the character authenticity identification before
character recognition.

3. APPLICATIONS
Hikvision ANPR technology features the most advanced machine learning algorithm and the
image processing measure, and reaches extremely high accuracy. It has the following
advantages:
 Small resource occupation;
 High recognition efficiency;
 Great capability: round-the-clock recognition and minimally affected by weather;
 Global application: supports Arabic numeric, English characters, and any other
language characters.
Vietnam ANPR Application Indian ANPR Application
Philippine ANPR Application Macau ANPR
Figure 10 Hikvision ANPR Global Application Examples
Most of the traditional ANPR technologies, which depend a lot on the license plate color
and structure, the accuracy rises and falls affected by the environment, are applied
limiting by their disadvantages. And if there are multiple plate types in the application
region, their recognition accuracy would greatly reduce.
Hikvision’s ANPR technology, however, does not rely on specific environmental and regional
conditions. Hikvision’s advanced algorithms can recognize multiple plate types. Hikvision
ANPR cameras satisfy global applications with recognition accuracy higher than 95
percent. Versions customized for specific region can reach 98 percent accuracy or more. At
present, Hikvision ANPR cameras have been applied in parking lots, buildings’ entrance and
exist, etc. and are approved by many customers.


Automatic Number Plate Recognition Technology: Hikvision

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HIKVISION

Automatic Number Plate

AUTOMATIC NUMBER PLATE RECOGNITION TECHNOLOGY 2

Figure 1 Plate Recognition Flow

AUTOMATIC NUMBER PLATE RECOGNITION TECHNOLOGY 3

2.1.1. ROUGH LOCATING

Figure 2 Rough Locating Result

2.1.2. FALSE PLATE FILTERING

Figure 3 False Plate Filtering Result

2.1.3. FINE LOCATING AND POST PROCESSING

Figure 4 Fine Locating Result

AUTOMATIC NUMBER PLATE RECOGNITION TECHNOLOGY 4

2.2. CHARACTER PARTITIONING

 CCL (Connected Component Labeling)

2.2.1. ROUGH PARTITION

AUTOMATIC NUMBER PLATE RECOGNITION TECHNOLOGY 5

1) To finely separate complicated characters problems such as one character separated

2) Hikvision’s character detection algorithm is used to identify characters with unequal

Figure 6 Partition Result of Characters with Unequal Width (Front Part)

Figure 7 Inter-Embedded Characters

2.2.3. BILAYER PLATE PROCESSING

Figure 8 The Main Layer is in the Upper Position

To maintain compatibility with both kinds of bilayer plates, an “internal adjustment

AUTOMATIC NUMBER PLATE RECOGNITION TECHNOLOGY 6

2.3. CHARACTER RECOGNITION

Get the greyscale of

Composite all the

Figure 9 Character Recognition Flow

AUTOMATIC NUMBER PLATE RECOGNITION TECHNOLOGY 7

 Small resource occupation;

 High recognition efficiency;

 Great capability: round-the-clock recognition and minimally affected by weather;

Vietnam ANPR Application Indian ANPR Application

Philippine ANPR Application Macau ANPR

Figure 10 Hikvision ANPR Global Application Examples

AUTOMATIC NUMBER PLATE RECOGNITION TECHNOLOGY 8

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