Cylindrical Medicine Bottle’s Character Recognition
of Automotive Dispensing Machine
Mingde Gong, Xianming Zhang
*
and Tao Ni
School of Mechanical Science and Engineering, Jilin University, Changchun city, China
*
Corresponding author
Abstract—a new scheme was designed to recognize the medicine
which was packed in small cylindrical bottle with a label on the
surface. To recognize the label of medicine a new algorithm was
needed, which was used to rectify the cylindrical character to
plane one. According to the equations of the rectification
algorithm, some related positons have to be design in a special
structure. After having rectified the label, the technique of OCR
or the algorithm SIFT (David Lowe) was referred to recognize
the certain character of the medicine label. This scheme could use
to recognize and sort the medicine in the automatic dispensing
machine.
Keywords-cylindrical; medicine; National Medicine Permit No.;
recognition; OCR
I. INTRODUCTION
In some large scale hospital, there are numerous injections
to be made. Generally, the preparation of the present stage of
our country was completed by medical staff in injection room
or ward therapeutic room. The intensity of work and low
efficiency of preparation are the disadvantages[1]. To make up
these disadvantages, some automatic dispensing machine had
been invented.
Normally, when doing the dispensation, the medical stuff
was asked to check the medical prescribe, which must be
executed without any mistake. Also in the medicine dispensing
machine the medicine checking job has to be done
automatically by the medicine recognition system.
There were three methods of medicine recognition. One
was using bar code, in this method a new label containing bar
code should be attached to the bottle. When doing the
recognition, a reader was needed to scan. With this technique,
efficiency of drug administration had been greatly improved,
manpower saved, data errors reduced[2]. While a fatal
weakness was that there hasn’t unified bar code for
drugs(BCD)[3]. This surely can’t be applied universally.
Another way was the radio-frequency technique. RFID is
an automatic untouched recognition technique, it recognizes
and collects relative data of objects by sending radio-frequency
signal[4][5]. In this project, a RF-ID, an aerial and a reader are
necessary[6]. The success rate can nearly reach 100%, which
however was definitely sophisticated and high cost.
Thirdly, optical recognition was also developed fast and
many merits had been achieved. The Ying Li[7] has done the
job by comparing the label figure taken in real time with the
standard one stored before. Calculating the difference of the
two figures, only if the value belongs to the special range
which was defined as the criteria of success recognition, can
get the right result. This algorithm ignored the direction of the
label, which was obvious too difficult to fulfill that, causing the
difference in theory.
So as far, there were few work has been done with
Cylindrical Character Recognition. It’s necessary to develop
new theory to fulfill the vacancy.
II. B
UILD THE STRUCTURE OF THE SCHEME
Before inducting the algorithm, a new structure of the
system should be made and understood. As an equipment that
would be used in automatic dispensing machine, the medicine
bottle has to be moved continuously passing the recognition
zone and reaching to the dispensing zone. So the bottle has to
be carried by a conveyer belt. When putted on the belt, the
label should face up to the camera located along the belt in
crossing direction. Behind the camera was a sorting equipment
(used to kick out the wrong medicine, but not the object that
would be introduced). The Figure I is the illustrative diagram.
FIGURE I. THE STRUCTURE OF THE SCHEME
When the medicine bottle moving through the camera zone,
an image will be taken. This image should contain cylindrical
character, including a distorted label figure. By making an
rectification operation, the characters of National Medicine
Permit No. can be recognized with OCR and SIFT algorithm,
getting the medicine recognized by the way.
III. C
HARACTER RECTIFICATION ALGORITHM
When bottle passing through the camera, an image was
taken immediately. But the characters in image could not be
recognized directly for having been distorted, especially near
the bottle edge, as was shown in the figure II. According to
pinhole imaging principle, a cylinder surface character can be
2nd International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Industrial Engineering (AIIE2016)
Copyright © 2016, the Authors. Published by Atlantis Press.
This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).
Advances in Intelligent Systems Research, volume 133