Improved license plate detection using HOG-based features and genetic algorithm

In this paper, a new improved plate detection method which uses genetic algorithm (GA) is proposed. GA randomly scans an input image using a fixed detection window repeatedly, until a region with the highest evaluation score is obtained. The performance of the genetic algorithm is evaluated based on the area coverage of pixels in an input image. It was found that the GA can cover up to 90% of the input image in just less than an average of 50 iterations using 30×130 detection window size, with 20 population members per iteration. Furthermore, the algorithm was tested on a database that contains 1537 car images. Out of these images, more than 98% of the plates were successfully detected. © 2016 IEEE.