Patent ID: 8331621

Claim:
A vehicle image capture system, comprising: a capture unit, comprising a first camera located at a first location, configured to capture multiple images of a single passing vehicle from the first location, wherein the first location is fixed during the capture of the multiple images, wherein the multiple images include at least: (i) a first image of the passing vehicle captured using a first capture state of the first camera of the capture unit, the first capture state comprising a first exposure setting; and (ii) a second image of the passing vehicle captured using a second capture state of the first camera of the capture unit that is different from the first capture state, the second capture state comprising a second exposure setting; a processing unit operatively coupled to the capture unit, wherein the processing unit is configured to receive, from the capture unit, the first image of the passing vehicle and the second image of the passing vehicle; and the processing unit being further configured to execute one or more modules comprising: a plate location module configured to determine a license plate area in both the first image and in the second image; an image enhancement module configured to process the first image of the passing vehicle and the second image of the passing vehicle to generate a composite image of the passing vehicle by a combination of image information from both the first image of the passing vehicle and the second image of the passing vehicle, wherein the composite image includes a composite license plate area, wherein the combination of image information within the composite license plate area includes one or both of image information from the license plate area of the first image and/or image information from the license plate area of the second image, wherein the combination of image information outside the composite license plate area includes one or both of image information from outside the license plate area of the first image and/or image information from outside the license plate area of the second image, and wherein the combination of image information within the composite license plate area differs from the combination of image information outside the composite license plate area.