1. An image-processing method for tag recognition in captured images, said method comprising: capturing a side image of a vehicle utilizing at least one camera of an automated vision-based recognition system comprising an image processor; localizing with said image processor a candidate region from regions of interest with respect to a physical object comprising a tag and a tag number shown in regions of interest within said side image of said vehicle by classifying said side image using a classifier trained as a trained classifier in an offline phase; calculating with said image processor a plurality of confidence levels with respect to each digit recognized as a result of an optical character recognition operation performed with respect to said tag number; determining with said image processor optimal candidates within said candidate region for said tag number based on individual character confidence levels among said plurality of confidence levels; and validating with said image processor said optimal candidates from a pool of valid tag numbers using prior appearance probabilities and returning data indicative of a most probable tag to be detected to improve image recognition accuracy with respect to data representing said physical object comprising said tag and tag number.