A hybrid method for laser etched metal label recognition

In order to recognize the characters etched on the metal label, the structural properties of alphabetic and digital characters on the metal label are analyzed, a hybrid method is presented, and different features are used during the recognition. The end points, the three cross points, four cross points and the positions of the three cross points and the end points are extracted. The templates made of those positions are used for the coarse classification. Minutiae features such as the Euler numbers are used for precise classification. It is demonstrated that the proposed structural features have good discrimination ability of similar characters and can be used for fast classification and recognition of etched characters on metal label.