Patent ID: 7347369

Claim:
Process for counting planar substrates, such as sheets of securities or banknotes, checks, cards and other similar objects, piled in a pack and comprising the following steps: (a) loosening the pack of piled substrates; (b) taking a first image of the edges of the piled planar substrates on a first counting side of said pack, said image being made of a two-dimensional array of single image detectors arranged in lines and columns; (c) for each column of single image detectors of said two-dimensional array, counting the number of edges of substrates detected in each line of single image detectors to obtain a counting value for each column; (d) statistically treating the result obtained from step (c) for determining which counting values are obtained and how often, said statistical treatment comprising the following steps: (d1) comparing the counting values obtained in each column; (d2) setting the result value of the counting to the most frequently obtained value in step (c); and (d3) for each other counting value of number of edges obtained in each other column, comparing the number of occurrences of said other value with respect to the result value obtained in step (d2); said process further comprising the following step: (e) based on the statistical treatment, determining whether the counting is accurate, said counting being determined to be inaccurate: if, in step (d2), the result value is different than a predetermined value; and/or if, in step (d3), each other counting values obtained occurs more than a predetermined percentage with respect to the most frequently obtained value.