Wavelet packet based feature extraction and recognition of license plate characters

To study the characteristics of license plate characters recognition, this paper proposes a method for feature extraction of license plate characters based on two-dimensional wavelet packet. We decompose license plate character images with two dimensional-wavelet packet and search for the optimal wavelet packet basis. This paper presents a criterion of searching for the optimal wavelet packet basis, and a practical algorithm. The obtained optimal wavelet packet basis is used as the feature of license plate character, and a BP neural network is used to classify the character. The testing results show that the proposed method achieved higher recognition rate than the traditional methods.