叶从胜，胡晓兵， 管清贵， 殷国富（四川大学制造与工程学院，四川成都 610065）   摘  要：针对传统天然气检测系统存在的检测效率低和准确性不高的问题，提出了基于显著形状特征的天然气表数字图像识别方法，通过对数字外轮廓进行简洁、高效的编码，并辅助数字长宽比、内腔等其他形状特征，从而能同时识别整字和半字出现的情况，即而实现了气表检测过程中读数的自动化。实践证明，新系统的检测效率大为提高。   关键词：气表检测；显著形状特征；数字识别   中图分类号：TP391.4      文献标识码：A     文章编号：1672-4984（2007）01-0051-03   Natural gas meter inspection based on image processing YE Cong-sheng， HU Xiao-bing， GUAN Qing-gui， YIN Guo-fu （School of Manufacturing and Engineering，Sichuan University，Chengdu 610065, China）   Abstract:This paper introduced a approach to identify numeric reading of natural gas meter，which was based on the representative shape characters of printed digits.By encoding the outer contour of digit with a compact and highly effective method which was aided by other shape characters，such as the ratio of length-width and the lumens of some digits，both results could be recognized correctly when either the half-digit or whole-digit situation appeared.So the automation of reading the natural gas meter in the process of inspection was implemented.After applying the research introduced in this paper to practice，the new system has greatly improved the efficiency，from the half automation system of inspecting 8 natural gas meters per day to 40 now.  Key words:Natural gas meter inspection；Representative character；Digit recognition