Fuzzified Gabor filter for license plate detection

•A new algorithm was developed to detect license plates from low-resolution images.•The algorithm uses fuzzy logic on a two-dimensional Gabor filter.•The use of fuzzy logic allows the algorithm to perform under non-ideal conditions.•Experiments were performed to validate the algorithm under various conditions.

1This paper presents a new algorithm for detecting and extracting license plates from a complex image by using a fuzzy two-dimensional Gabor filter. The filter parameters are fuzzified to optimize the Gabor filter. In particular, the orientation and wavelengths of the Gabor filter are fuzzified. Fuzzification of the wavelength results in greater selectivity. These parameters dominate the filtering results. Bell’s function and triangular membership function were proven to be the most efficient method for selecting the filter parameters in our experiments and were used for fuzzification. The use of these filters provided satisfactory results; the components of interest were efficiently extracted, and the procedure was found to be very noise-resistant.