Identification of coins using a digital fingerprint

Abstract

The Landesamt für Denkmalpflege und Archäologie – Landesmuseum für Vorgeschichte - Sachsen-Anhalt has developed an innovative process in cooperation with the Fraunhofer-Institut für Fabrikbetrieb und -automatisierung (IFF) in Magdeburg, with which coins can be described and identified unmistakably by an individual "digital fingerprint". This “Optical System for Coin Analysis and Recognition”, O.S.C.A.R., is an optical data acquisition system with software analysis techniques based on photometric stereo analysis. Measurement data on the object geometry, color and surface structure of a coin are used to generate an individual recognition key, which is matched to the database during a search query.