Abstract: A novel algorithm is proposed，which may recognize and extract efficaciously the road network from paper-based color highway traffic map images.This algorithm includes three key steps.Firstly，according to the features of the non-road regions，the luminance of the non-road regions is extracted.Secondly，based on the color and shape features of roads，the colors of the road network are recognized and extracted，which taking advantage of some digital image processing technologies such as connection component.Finally，some methods are put forward to connect some road segments in order that the whole road networks are obtained.This algorithm has been applied to many highway traffic map images.It is shown that the algorithm is effective in various successful cases.