SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR OPTICAL LICENSE PLATE MATCHING

1 . A method for reading license plate characters, comprising:

capturing a license plate image

processing the image with optical character recognition equipment to produce an OCR result;

associating said OCR result with a confidence level;

presenting said image for a first manual review to produce a manual result without displaying to the reviewer said OCR result;

if said manual result matches said OCR result, determining that said OCR result is correct;

if said manual result does not match said OCR result, presenting said image for a second manual review by a different reviewer than said first manual reviewer to produce a second manual result;

if said second manual result matches said OCR result, determining that said OCR result is correct;

if said second manual result does not match said OCR result, presenting said image for a third manual review by a different reviewer than said first and second manual reviews;

if said third manual result matches said OCR result, determining that said OCR result is correct;

if said third manual result does not match said OCR result, presenting said image for a supervisory review by a different reviewer than said first, second and third manual reviews.

2 . A method for reading license plate characters, comprising:

capturing a first license plate image;

processing said first image with optical character recognition equipment to produce an OCR result;

associating said OCR result with a confidence level;

if said confidence level is above a predetermined threshold, determining whether said OCR result matches a previously-obtained OCR result and

if said confidence level is not above said predetermined threshold, presenting said image for a manual review to produce a manual result.

3 . The method of claim 2 , further comprising, in the case where said confidence level is not above said predetermined threshold, providing at least one additional image for manual review of said image.

4 . The method of claim 3 , further comprising determining whether said first image contains multiple license plates.

5 . The method of claim 3 , further comprising determining whether said first image shows a vehicle straddling more than one traffic lane.

6 . The method of claim 2 , further comprising, in the case where said confidence level is above said predetermined threshold, determining whether said OCR result for a previously analyzed image was verified by manual image review.

7 . The method of claim 6 , further comprising, in the case where said confidence level is above said predetermined threshold and where said OCR result for a previously-analyzed image was verified by manual image review, determining whether said confidence level is above a second predetermined level, and if so, associating said OCR result with a video toll transaction.

8 . The method of claim 6 , further comprising, in the case where said confidence level is above said predetermined threshold but where said OCR result for a previously-analyzed image was not verified by manual image review, associating said first image with a first identifying flag and presenting said first image for manual review.

9 . The method of claim 6 , further comprising, in the case where said confidence level is above said predetermined threshold and where said OCR result for a previously-analyzed image was verified by manual image review, determining whether said confidence level is above a second predetermined level, and if not, associating said first image with a second identifying flag and presenting said first image for manual review.