In this paper, a novel self-creating disk-cell-splitting (SCDCS) algorithm is proposed for training the radial wavelet neural network (RWNN) model. Combining with the least square (LS) method which determines the linear weight coefficients, SCDCS can create neurons adaptively on a disk according to the distribution of input data and learning goals. As a result, a disk map is made for input data as well as a RWNN model with proper architecture and parameters can be decided for the recognition task. The proposed SCDCS-LS based RWNN model is employed for the recognition of license plate characters. Compared to the classical radial-basis-function (RBF) network with K-means clustering and LS, the proposed model can make a better recognition performance even with fewer neurons.