Patent ID: 7044285

Claim:
A coin discriminating apparatus for determining whether a to-be-examined coin is genuine or spurious by making a comparison between an image of the to-be-examined coin photographed by an image pickup device and a prestored image of a master coin used as a criterion, the coin discriminating apparatus comprising: rectangular-image generation means for transforming a circular image of the to-be-examined coin photographed by the image pickup device into a rectangular image; rectangular-image storage means for prestoring a rectangular image of a master coin used as a criterion, and comparison means for making a comparison between a rectangular image obtained by the rectangular-image generation means and the rectangular image stored in the rectangular-image storage means; wherein the to-be-examined coin is determined to be genuine or spurious based on a comparison result obtained by the comparison means, wherein processing by the rectangular-image generation means, processing by the rectangular-image storage means, and processing by the comparison means are applied sequentially and in parallel to coins that have been inserted continuously or intermittently.