Patent ID: 6488155
Filing Date: 2002-12-03
Classification: B07C,G06K,Y10S

Abstract:
A system for reading information based on emissions from an information encoded region on a substrate, comprising:an optical source for illuminating the substrate; an imaging device for obtaining an image of at least a portion of the substrate; and a data processor having an input coupled to an output of the imaging device for locating and orienting the encoded region in the image, the encoded region being comprised of a plurality of sub-regions, for locating and separating individual ones of the sub-regions in the image, for determining an emission wavelength of each separated sub-region and, in accordance with a list of possible emission wavelengths and a spatial ordering of the sub-regions, for decoding the encoded information, where the data processor, when locating and separating, employs a peak finding algorithm based on a pattern recognition algorithm that looks for a characteristic four-point signature at inflection points of smoothed image data, where peaks are decoded and then sorted according to which peaks appear most like a typical sub-region, and retains a first n highest-scoring peaks, where n is a number of expected sub-regions.