How can I identify Arabic letters in an image using Java?

Question

I want to identify Egyptian car number plates that look like this:

license plate image

How can I do this in Java ?

I plan to do this in Android, as the user will catch the number plate with a camera and the results will be submitted to server.

For info on OCR in Java look at my answer for this question: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8786643/java-cyrillic-character-recognition-api/8800984#8800984 — Nikolay, Feb 13 '12 at 10:19
Do you have a template of all the possible number/letter shapes found on license plates? — endolith, May 03 '13 at 17:47

score 8 · Answer 1 · answered Feb 10 '12 at 09:36

You have to do following methods:

First step: Number plate extraction

You can use OpenCV for this purpose. It has Java api. Also it is ported to Android.

Second step : OCR

OCR is used to recognise the letters on notice board.

You can train your own OCR for arabic letters and digits using OpenCV.

Or you can use tesseract-OCR. I think it supports arabic also.

Following paper will be useful for you: Paper 1

Also, this site includes complete code for number plate extraction, but in C++. But it will be a good start.

score -1 · Answer 2 · answered Feb 10 '12 at 04:55

The link provides an algorithm to detect text from an image in Java... it works for English..

2 Answers2