AUTOMATED FRAUDULENT ALTERING AND PHOTOCOPYING DETECTION UTILIZING STEGANOGRAPHIC PATTERN DETECTION
Systems, methods, and machines for automatically verifying the authenticity and integrity of a ticket such as an instant lottery ticket, a draw lottery ticket, a passive lottery ticket, and/or a Ticket In Ticket Out (Tito) ticket. The systems, methods, and machines verify the authenticity and integrity of a ticket by capturing a first image of the ticket, verifying that the first captured image does not show an apparent steganographic pattern, processing the first captured image to produce a second image, and then verifying that the second image does show an apparent steganographic pattern.
1 . A method for verifying authenticity of a lottery ticket having a pattern printed in an area of the lottery ticket, the method comprising:
using a digital camera to acquire a digital ticket image of the lottery ticket;
orienting the digital ticket image to a grid, which comprises:
finding an edge of the lottery ticket in the digital ticket image,
aligning the edge of the lottery ticket in the digital ticket image to the grid, and
generating a modified digital ticket image;
analyzing the modified digital ticket image for the absence of an apparent pattern;
post-processing the modified digital ticket image to produce a Digital Image;
analyzing the Digital Image for apparent patterns printed in the area of the lottery ticket; and
verifying that the modified ticket image did not include an apparent pattern and that the Digital Image did include an apparent pattern to validate the lottery ticket.
2 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the orienting the digital ticket image to the grid comprises:
optical character recognition scanning the modified digital ticket image for the presence of human-readable text, and
orienting the modified digital ticket image such that the human-readable text is right side up.
3 . The method of claim 2 , wherein the optical character recognition scanning of the modified digital ticket image for the presence of human-readable text identifies a configuration of the pattern.
4 . The method of claim 3 , wherein the identified configuration of the pattern is one of a plurality of different possible patterns.
5 . The method of claim 1 , wherein orienting the digital ticket image to the grid comprises:
scanning the modified digital ticket image for the presence of a machine-readable barcode, and
orienting the modified digital ticket image with respect to the machine-readable barcode such that the modified digital ticket image is right side up.
6 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the identified configuration of the pattern is one of a plurality of possible patterns.
7 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the pattern is a void pantograph.
8 . The method of claim 7 , wherein the post-processing of the modified digital ticket image comprises a skewed digital line scanner process.
9 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the pattern is a moiré pattern.
10 . The method of claim 9 , wherein the post-processing of the modified digital ticket image includes a moiré pattern overlay.
11 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the pattern comprises at least three different colors and which comprises detecting the apparent pattern using a color filter.
12 . The method of claim 1 , which comprises detecting the apparent pattern using a line filter.
13 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the lottery ticket is an instant lottery ticket.
14 . A method for verifying authenticity of a lottery ticket having a pattern printed in an area of the lottery ticket, the method comprising:
using a digital camera to acquire a digital ticket image of the lottery ticket;
generating a modified digital ticket image comprising a grid;
using the modified digital ticket image to verify that the pattern is not readily apparent;
digitally creating a digital photocopy of the digital ticket image and saving a resultant Digital Image; and
determining an appearance of the pattern in the Digital Image to verify the authenticity of the lottery ticket.
15 . The method of claim 14 , wherein the pattern is one of a plurality of different possible patterns.
16 . The method of claim 14 , wherein the lottery ticket is an instant lottery ticket.
17 . A method for verifying authenticity of a lottery ticket having a pattern printed in an area of the lottery ticket, the method comprising:
using a digital camera to acquire a digital ticket image of the lottery ticket;
using the digital ticket image to verify that the pattern is not readily apparent;
digitally creating a digital photocopy of the digital ticket image; and
detecting if the pattern is present in the digital photocopy to verify the authenticity of the lottery ticket.
18 . The method of claim 17 , wherein the pattern is one of a plurality of different patterns.
19 . The method of claim 17 , wherein the pattern is a void pantograph.
20 . The method of claim 17 , wherein the lottery ticket is an instant lottery ticket.