Patent ID: 8162219

Claim:
An apparatus for identifying and verifying authenticity of an item, comprising: an optical imager; a microcontroller interconnected to said imager; a database accessible to said microcontroller; and wherein said microcontroller further comprises a first module programmed to configure said apparatus prior to verifying the authenticity of said item by capturing a first optical image of at least one indicia and storing at least a portion of said first optical image in said database, a second module programmed to trigger capturing of at least a second optical image when said item is presented to said optical imager, a third module programmed to indentify and extract a predetermined region of interest from said optical image, a fourth module programmed to retrieve said first optical image from said database and compare said first optical image to said region of interest in said second optical image, and a fifth module programmed to determine whether said item is authentic based on said comparison of said fourth module by computing at least one shape feature vector for said indicia and comparing said vector to at least one stored vector.