A Hybrid Method Based on Haris Corner and Maximally Stable Extremal Regions for Vehicle Plate Number Detection

Abstract

An intelligent transportation system (ITS) is a crucial element of a smart city, and it includes the capability to identify vehicle license plates. Utilizing digital image processing is a cost-effective method for identification. The tiny size of the number plate is just one of the many unfortunate difficulties with this approach. Hence, this research is crucial, particularly in enhancing the precision of detection. The Harris Corner approach is one way to locate the motor vehicle number plate location. However, the Harris corner method could be more optimal for analyzing moving vehicle videos as input. Since frame-by-frame variations in the video input's lighting, accuracy cannot be maximized. Furthermore, the vehicle and license plate appear significantly smaller due to the camera's distant positioning. Consequently, the authors suggest a hybrid approach using the Maximally Stable Extremal Regions (MSER) method. The Harris Corner and MSER methods will concurrently identify the initial position of the vehicle number plate. Moreover, the initial detection outcomes of the two techniques are compared and adjusted to achieve a more precise determination of the placement of the number plate. The results show that integrating the MSER method into the Harris Corner method yields a hybrid approach that enhances accuracy by 13%. Furthermore, it visually represents the selected number plate with greater accuracy.