Patent ID: 8417017

Claim:
A method of processing currency bills in a document processing system, the method comprising the acts of: receiving a plurality of currency bills in an input receptacle of the document processing system, a portion of each currency bill bearing a serial number comprising a plurality of serial number characters; transporting the plurality of currency bills along a transport path, in a serial fashion, from the input receptacle; imaging each of the plurality of currency bills with an image scanner positioned adjacent to the transport path to produce image data, the image data associated with each individual bill being reproducible as a visually readable image of at least a portion of a respective currency bill including a portion of each respective currency bill bearing at least a portion of a serial number; determining the denomination of each bill; for each bill, attempting to extract serial number characters from image data associated with a bill; generating an extracted serial number for each bill, the extracted serial number for each bill comprising serial number characters which were extracted with a predetermined degree of confidence, wherein the extracted serial number additionally comprises one or more wildcard characters in place of any serial number characters which were not extracted with the predetermine degree of confidence; generating a record for each bill, each record comprising the determined denomination of a respective bill, the extracted serial number associated with a respective bill, and image data reproducible as a visually readable image of at least a portion of a respective currency bill bearing at least a portion of a serial number; storing each record in a database; receiving a target serial number comprising a plurality of target serial number characters; searching the database for records containing an extracted serial number which exactly matches the target serial number; and displaying a portion of each record which contains an extracted serial number which exactly matches the target serial number, the displayed portion of each record comprising at least a visually readable image of at least a portion of a respective currency bill bearing at least a portion of a serial number, wherein in determining whether an extracted serial number exactly matches the target serial number, any wildcard characters in an extracted serial number are treated as exactly matching corresponding target serial number characters.