[🇹🇭 ภาษาไทย](./README.md)

# Thai License Plate OCR Dataset 🇹🇭

> **Language:** Thai 🇹🇭  
> **Task:** Optical Character Recognition (OCR)

This is a Thai-language OCR dataset built specifically for use with the `PaddleOCR-rec` module. It is designed to train text recognition models that can read vehicle license plates in Thailand, including both license numbers and province names.

> ⚠️ This dataset is intended **exclusively** for use with `PaddleOCR-rec`. It does **not** include detection or classification annotations.

---

## Dataset Structure

```
thai-license-ocr-dataset/
├── images/           # All images
├── train.txt         # Training data
├── val.txt           # Validation data
├── test.txt          # Test data
├── th_dict.txt       # Thai dictionary for PaddleOCR
└── README.md         # Dataset description
```

Each line in `*.txt` follows the format:

```
images/img_0001.jpg    <text label>
```

---

## Dataset Details

The original data is a character-level object detection dataset for Thai license plates.  
We restructured and converted it to a sequence-level OCR dataset suitable for PaddleOCR-rec, with the following steps:

- Character bounding boxes were detected using a fine-tuned YOLOv11 detection model trained on the original dataset
- Character boxes were sorted left-to-right and filtered to retain only relevant classes
- Regex and province-code mappings were applied for verification
- Line 1 and line 2 of each license plate were separated logically
- Data was exported in `<image_path> <label>` format compatible with PaddleOCR-rec

### 🔗 Raw Detection Dataset  
[Roboflow: LPR Plate Thai (by billy-h0ini)](https://universe.roboflow.com/billy-h0ini/lpr-plate-fiq65-3r8ep-akpt2-f6x28-1ub8l/dataset/1)

---

## Usage Example (Training with PaddleOCR)

```bash
python tools/train.py \
  -c configs/rec_svtr_th.yml \
  -o Train.dataset.data_dir="./thai-license-ocr-dataset/" \
     Train.dataset.label_file_list=["train.txt"] \
     Global.character_dict_path="./thai-license-ocr-dataset/th_dict.txt"
```

---

## 👤 Attribution

- Raw detection dataset by [billy-h0ini](https://universe.roboflow.com/billy-h0ini) via Roboflow Universe  
- Converted to OCR dataset by [MorseTech Lab](https://www.morsetechlab.com/)

---

## 🛡️ License

**Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)**  
You are free to use, modify, and redistribute this dataset for any purpose, including commercial use, provided that appropriate credit is given to the original authors.