In this paper, we propose an improved numeric character recognition method which can recognize numeric characters well under low-illuminated and shade-illuminated environment. The LN(Local Normalization) preprocessing method is used in order to enhance low-illuminated and shade-illuminated image quality. The reading area is detected using line segment information extracted from the illumination-normalized meter images, and then the three-phase procedures are performed for segmentation of numeric characters in the reading area. Finally, an efficient hybrid classifier is used to classify the segmented numeric characters. The proposed numeric character classifier is a combination of multi-layered feedforward neural network and template matching module. Robust heuristic rules are applied to classify the numeric characters. Experiments using meter image database were conducted. Meter image database was made using various kinds of meters under low-illuminated and shade-illuminated environment. The experimental results indicates the superiority of the proposed numeric character recognition method.