Abstract: An overlapped portion of a plurality of partial images of a fingerprint that are input from a fingerprint input device (7) is corrected to be reconfigured at a reconfiguration process section (106). The characteristics are extracted from the input partial images at the fingerprint characteristic information extracting section (110) and the extracted characteristic information is stored in an input characteristic information memory. A verification process section executes DP comparison (dynamic programming method) between the characteristic information stored in the input characteristic information memory and the characteristic information stored in the registered characteristic information memory. The distance value obtained by the DP comparison is compared to a threshold that is previously set. If the distance value is smaller than the threshold, it is judged the fingerprint is identified and if the distance value is larger than the threshold, it is judged that the fingerprint is not identified.

Abstract: In a license plate information reader device (A) for motor vehicles, a CCD camera (1) is provided to produce video image data (11) involving a license plate obtained by photographing a front and rear portion of a motor vehicle. An A/D converter (3) produces a digital multivalue image data (31) by A/D converting the video image data (11). A license plate extracting device (4) is provided to produce a digital multivalue image data (41) corresponding to an area in which the license plate occupies. A literal region extracting device (5) extracts a literal positional region of a letter sequence of the license plate based on the image obtained from the license plate extracting device (4). A literal recognition device (6) is provided to recognize a letter from a literal image (571) of the literal positional region obtained from the literal region extracting device (5).