The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Oct. 29, 2002
Filed:
Sep. 15, 1999
Jenn-Kwei Tyan, Princeton, NJ (US);
Claus Neubauer, Monmouth Junction, NJ (US);
Siemens Corporate Research, Inc., Princeton, NJ (US);
Abstract
A method for segmenting and recognizing license plates, in accordance with the present invention includes capturing an image of a license plate and preprocessing the image to prepare the image for segmentation and recognition. Forward splitting regions of the license plate image into suspected characters regions, the suspected character regions are recognized in the license plate image and a confidence score is provided based on a probability of a correct match. If the suspected characters have a confidence score below a threshold value, backward merging is employed which merges adjacent suspected character regions. The backward merged suspected character regions in the license plate are recognized. If the backward merged suspected character regions have a confidence score below the threshold value, the backward merging and recognizing steps are repeated to improve the confidence score.