ACKNOWLEDGMENT

We have taken efforts in this project and it would not have been possible without the help of many individuals. We would like to express our sincere thanks to: Mr. Irfan Ahmed Usmani, our teacher, for his constant guidance and for providing information regarding this project. Mr. Fawad Shawkat, for his assistance and encouragement. My friends, for their help. And finally thanks to God, who made all things possible.

INTRODUCTION
Our project of Digital Signal Processing (DSP) is based on Image Processing. It is basically a program in MATLAB that takes an image of a license number plate, detects the alphabets and numbers in it, identifies them and then prints them individually. The purpose of this project is to implement this kind of program and techniques in many image related areas on bigger scale. Like for example, a picture of a license number plate can be captured from a camera in a parking lot and detected using this code and identified.

MOTIVATION

The seed of this idea, of an image processing project, was planted in our minds when we saw our seniors with a similar final year project. They had applied the same logic for a bigger application. The idea of image processing seemed a very appealing on, and when it was proposed to the teachers, they appreciated it. So, we gave our idea a proper form and started working on it.

METHODOLOGY

There are different parts in the code which are performed using different functions and commands in MATLAB. First of all, we create an image and load it on MATLAB using the imread command. Then, we convert it to grayscale from RGB color using the command rgb2gray. We do this because we want to work in grayscale and in 2D. Then, we use the edge command to detect only the edges of our image and letters, so the there is 1 where there is an edge and a 0 otherwise. After that, we break our image in pieces using a for loop. The next step is correlation, the broken images are correlated with all the existing alphabets and numbers, and if we get maximum similarity, that number or alphabet is printed giving us our required output.

CONCLUSION

After looking at the method, working and coding of the program, we can conclude that our program works solely on image processing techniques in MATLAB. It can be easily taken and used for small scale applications in the image processing fields and areas.

SUMMARY

Image processing is a kind of Digital Signal Processing in which computer algorithms are used to perform processing on images. This project is based totally on this kind of DSP. The program/algorithm is written and run on MATLAB where it detects the number plate and gives the individual alphabets and numbers. In the program, an image of a number plate is loaded at first, turned into grayscale then separated and correlation is done to match two images. The numbers and alphabets are then printed giving us our desired output. Image processing algorithms are now widely used everywhere, for its applications are far more than we can imagine. Our project can also be used in some small scale applications of image processing

REFERENCES
www.mathworks.com MATLAB Help/Image Processing Toolbox