License Plate Localization based on Kapur Optimal
Multilevel Threshold
Nur Aliyatul Husna Bt Yahya
Center for Artificial Intelligence Technology
Faculty of Information Science and Technology,
The National University of Malaysia
Selangor, Malaysia
aliyatulhusna@gmail.com
Abbas Salimi Bin Zaini
Center for Artificial Intelligence Technology
Faculty of Information Science and Technology,
The National University of Malaysia
Selangor, Malaysia
zabbassalimi@gmail.com
Azizi Bin Abdullah
Center for Artificial Intelligence Technology
Faculty of Information Science and Technology,
The National University of Malaysia
Selangor, Malaysia
azizia@ukm.edu.my
Abstract— A license plate localization system is useful for
many applications. Due to ambient of lighting in three distinct
situation which are morning, afternoon and night causing
difficulty to search optimum threshold value in each situation.
This research uses global thresholding approach by using Kapur
entropy multilevel threshold based on Patch-Levy Bees
Algorithm (PLBA). As a result, the system properly localize and
identify number plate in the image by using proposed
segmentation image. From the experiment, proposed method are
achieve accuracy rates to 67.68%, 90.71%, 24.34% respectively
for morning, afternoon and night dataset.
Keywords—Image segmentation; Multilevel thresholding;
License Plate Localization
I. INTRODUCTION
Researches on license plate recognition are growing to
become more robust with the existing proposed methods. Some
of the important applications are solid access control,
systematic traffic control, automation of toll collection,
identification of stolen vehicle, border control and law
enforcements [1,2]. License plate recognition generally
comprised several steps that are image capturing, image
localization, feature extraction and classification. In this paper,
the proposed method is based on image localization method.
There are various studies that have been done in
localization method. Khaleel [3] proposed localization by using
978-1-5090-3519-9/17/$31.00 2017
c IEEE
Siti Norul Huda Bt Sheikh Abdullah
Center for Artificial Intelligence Technology
Faculty of Information Science and Technology,
The National University of Malaysia
Selangor, Malaysia
snhsabdullah@ukm.edu.my
Mohd Zamri Murah
Center for Artificial Intelligence Technology
Faculty of Information Science and Technology,
The National University of Malaysia
Selangor, Malaysia
mohdzamrimurah@gmail.com
Shariffpudin Basiron
Synergy Saver (M) Sdn Bhd,
Selangor, Malaysia
shariff@my-synergy.com
Speeded Up Robust Features (SURF) and Bag-of Words
(BoW) feature descriptors. They were combined and clustered
by using K-means clustering to form a novel way of localizing
the license plate’s region in an image. Makaoui et al. [4]
inspect the car vertical edges to locate the plate by using Haar
wavelet method with several edge detection algorithms such as
Sobel and Canny algorithms, as well as morphological,
including the black-hat transform. Abidin[2] proposed
multilevel thresholding method based on combination of
maximum entropy. However, performance of the method gives
a low level in segmentation process because the chosen
threshold value does not apply optimization process. Abdullah
et al. [1] proposed adaptive thresholding by finding peak of the
blob distributions to identify the license plate number of the
vehicle due to ambient of lighting. Wen et al. [5] proposed high
dynamic range (HDR) method to enhance the image and the
morphology operator is applied to locate the license plate in the
image followed by binarization, tilt correction, and
segmentation to obtain several upright license characters.
Reseachers shows that even though there are many usage of
multilevel threshold in recent studies, some of the methods are
still having problems in robustness and computationally
intensive [1][7]. Hence, multilevel threshold can be improve
further.
In Malaysia, there are some difficulties for the system to
obtain a good localization result. According to Synergy Saver
CEO Mr. Shariffpudin Basiron, their company have tested
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several LPR products and failed to achieve high accuracy rate
because of unstandardized license plate format practice due to
the lack of enforcement in Malaysia. Some of the license plates
are in the form of a single or a double line with normal fonts.
Others are made of special fonts, such as italic-like fonts as in
[1]. Fig. 1 shows samples of license plates in Malaysia.
Fig. 1. Samples of license plates in Malaysia
binary image from gray level image into black and white
image by turning all the pixels below some threshold value to
zero and all the pixels that upper the threshold value into one.
In this paper, multilevel thresholding scheme for Kapur’s
based on the Patch-Levy-based Bees Algorithm (PLBA) is
proposed for license plate localization. In this section, Kapur’s
objective functions are presented and then the multilevel
thresholding PLBA-based algorithm is explain for searching
the optimal thresholds based on Kapur’s objective functions.
Assume that an image can be represented by L gray levels.
The probability of gray level i in the image can be calculated
as:

(1)

Where,

h(i) = number of pixel,I in the image

= total pixel in the image

If the image divide into three classes, A, B and C based on

number of threshold t,where class A containing gray levels
from 1 until t1, B containing gray levels t1+1 until t2 and C
containing gray levels t2+1 until L normalization probability
pA, pB and pC are as follow:

Fig. 2. License Plate Localization (2)

There are many obstacles to get accurate result. Locating an

object in an image can be a difficult problem due to complexity (3)
of image background license plate, vehicle color and variety
type, and change as a result of different weather conditions and
other factors in different light, making accurate positioning (4)
difficulty [6]. The proposed localization method consists of
three steps; image segmentation, blob agglomeration and Where,
location of license plate as in Fig 2. To improve the
localization method we are include the segmentation process to
subdivide image into several classes by using two types of
maximum entropy which is Kapur entropy based on Patch
Levy Bees Algorithm. Hussein et al. [7] introduced Patch Levy
Bees Algorithm based on Kapur entropy to investigate the (5)
ability of the method to search optimum multilevel threshold
values. This is due to the increasingly level of thresholds will
extend the computational time. To reduce the computational
(6)
time, metaheuristic search algorithm helps to find optimum
threshold in a reasonable time [8].

II. MOTIVATION (7)

A. Multilevel thresholding
One of the popular technique in image segmentation is
thresholding method. Thresholding process is to generate

78 2017 7th International Conference on Cloud Computing, Data Science & Engineering – Confluence
 Kapur Entropy for the class A, B and C are:
(8)
(9)
(10)
The entropy of threshold image is calculated by
following objective function:
H(t) = EA(t) + EB(t) + EC(t) (11)
Kapur entropy method selects the optimal threshold
by chosen maximum entropy as bellow:
t*= arg max(H(t)) (12)
B. Patch Levy Bees Algorithm (PLBA)
Patch and Levy are to enhance the initialization stage of
basic Bees algorithm in local and global parts. A Levy flights is
a random walk in which the step-lengths have a probability
distribution. Generating step-lengths based to Levy distribution
is advantageous for local parts as short steps in making more
population members exploit the more convincing areas. At the
same time, the rarely long jumps happened which help keeping
the members portion to explore the distant areas of solution
space as the advantageous for global parts. As a result, it is
sprinting the convergence to the optimal solutions. After the
initialization stage, the evaluation of the population is takes
place. If the criterion for stopping is not met, a new population
will be generated by selecting other sites for neighborhood
search. A local search algorithm called greedy local search
based on Levy flight works at the same time reduces the length
of the long steps of Levy flight and frequent short steps on
exploiting the convincing areas, hence, new optima can be
found. The process continue with the remaining bees
redistribute inside the hive to the patches according to Levy
flight distribution to scout again and evaluate their fitness until
the criterion is met [8,9]. The PLBA method summarize as
below:
2017 7th International Conference on Cloud Computing, Data Science & Engineering – Confluence
Fig. 3. Summarize of PLBA method [8]
III. METHODOLOGY
Research method contain three steps which are image
segmentation using PLBA-Kapur, blob agglomeration and
location of license plate. Steps are described as below.
A. Multilevel thresholding
The first step in localization process is image segmentation
to find optimum threshold value by using PLBA-Kapur. After
multilevel threshold is discovered, the maximum threshold
value between multilevel values is applied to obtain the
number plate. This is due to the number plate is in the
maximum intensity of gray scale. In this stage, the images is in
binary image that containing significant object in the form of
white blobs. However, white blobs are also containing noise.
B. Blob Agglomeration
After the threshold process, contour is applied to find
significant object (blobs of white pixels) on the image using
basic geometric equations. Each potential blobs are enclosed
with rectangle label. Blobs that not differ much based on their
vertical coordinate, distance and height are clustered. The
selected blob is considered as the winner blob.
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C. Location of License Plate

For the localization part, after the winner blob is identified,

the blobs are compared with real character of the number plate.
If the character is correctly classify, then the localization is
successful. The accuracy of the localization is calculated based
on the score of the hits character in the localization.

IV. EXPERIMENTAL RESULT

The image collection (dataset) was obtained from Sistem
Lingkaran-Lebuh Raya Kajang (SILK) Highway-Sungai Long
Toll Plaza, a highway in Malaysia. The dataset are divided into
3 categories based on morning (297 images), afternoon (140
images) and night (152 images).

Fig. 5. Accuracy of [1] with PLBA-Kapur for morning dataset

(a) (b) (c) Table II shows the accuracy of multilevel threshold based
on [1] with PLBA - Kapur which is proposed method
Fig. 4. Sample of UKM-Synergy dataset in the (a) morning, (b) afternoon compared with adaptive threshold [1] using Kittler and
and (c) night Illingworth method and SURFBoW [3] using Kittler and
Illingworth thresholding method. The accuracy for the methods
The proposed method was tested to LPR system. The
show that afternoon dataset is achieved higher accuracy;
results obtained by proposed multilevel threshold is compared
90.71%, 80.71% and 85% correspondingly. This is due to the
with adaptive threshold [1] using Kittler and Illingworth
medium high contrast that helps to reduce the illumination
method and SURFBoW [3] using Kittler and Illingworth
problems. However, the system deals with different of
thresholding method. Table I and fig. 4 and 5 show the
illumination that is irregular contrast in morning dataset images
accuracy for morning, afternoon and night dataset by using
gives the percentage 67.68% accuracy of [1] with PLBA -
PLBA-Kapur with different number of threshold. For morning
Kapur, 62.29% accuracy of [1] using Kittler and Illingworth
dataset show that, two threshold is the higher accuracy
thresholding method and 58.25% accuracy of [3] using Kittler
(67.68%). For afternoon dataset, the higher accuracy (90.71%)
and Illingworth thresholding method. For night dataset, which
at two number of threshold among the dataset which give
has very low contrast of lighting causes the accuracy is very
sufficient of lighting compared to morning and night dataset.
low. Accuracy of [1] with PLBA - Kapur, [1] using Kittler and
Night dataset also give high accuracy at two number of
Illingworth thresholding method and [3] using Kittler and
threshold which is 24.34%.
Illingworth thresholding method for night dataset is 24.34%,
40.79% and 56.58%. Reflections of car lighting towards
TABLE I. ACCURACY FOR MORNING, AFTERNOON AND NIGHT DATASET cameras also may causes the license plate was hidden and
BY USING [1] WITH PLBA-KAPUR WITH DIFFERENT NO.OF THRESHOLD effected the accuracy of localization.
Morning Dataset The accuracy of [1] with PLBA - Kapur is higher than [1]
No of threshold 2 3 4
using Kittler and Illingworth thresholding method and [3]
using Kittler and Illingworth thresholding method for morning
Accuracy of [1] with PLBA -
Kapur
67.68% 57.23% 52.18% and afternoon dataset because the ability of the optimization of
threshold to search the optimum classes of the multilevel
Afternoon Dataset
images. The competent object can be obtained in the image
No of threshold 2 3 4 during the daylight. However, [3] using Kittler and
Accuracy of [1] with PLBA - Illingworth thresholding method is having higher accuracy at
90.71% 87.86% 83.57% night. Thus, [1] with PLBA - Kapur can be improved.
Kapur
Night Dataset

No of threshold 2 3 4
Accuracy of [1] with PLBA -
24.34% 15.13% 9.21%
Kapur

80 2017 7th International Conference on Cloud Computing, Data Science & Engineering – Confluence
 Illingworth thresholding. Experimental results show that the
Sample Original Image Segmentation image proposed multilevel threshold works better on daylight dataset
Dataset and improved the localization accuracy. However, the
a)Morning
proposed method can be further improved to increase the
accuracy in the future.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This project is funded by PRGS/1/2016/ICT02/UKM/02/1
b)Afternoon GRANT entitled “Intelligent Vehicle Identity Recognition for
Surveillance”, DIP 2015-023 entitled “ Object Descriptor via
Optimized Unsupervised Learning Approaches” and
ERGS/1/2013/ICT01/UKM/03/5 entitled “Pembelajaran
Separa Selia Bagi Penggolongan Kata Jawi Untuk Manuskrip
c)Night Melayu” are used to fund this project.

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V. CONCLUSION
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