A license plate reader uses a neural network to determine a plurality of predicted license plate regions within an image. The plurality of predicted license plate regions is transferred to an optical character recognition unit that performs optical character recognition on the plurality of predicted license plate regions to output a plurality of predicted character sequences. The license plate reader receives the output of the optical character recognition unit that contains the plurality of predicted character sequences and analyzes the plurality of predicted character sequences to determine a best estimate for a character sequence in the image.