Method and apparatus to identify and separate medicinal preparations and dosages thereof

Abstract

Machine vision is used for the separation or identification of medicinal preparation or the dosage of medication in various situations for example, without limitation, morning, day, evening and night doses, in which the dose is delivered from medicine boxes or other containers. In one implementation the medicine table or medicine box that is typically set to a planar scanner and a picture is taken with a camera or a camera phone and the picture is analyzed with machine vision software for separation and indentification of the medical preparation or the dose. Medicines are then recognized in cooperation with a database, and information related to the recognized medicines are transmitted or displayed. The identification of the medicinal preparation is often useful in many official tasks that require near real time identification of the medicine.

Description

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS [0001] The present continuation-in-part patent claims priority benefit of the PCT international patent application designating the United States with PCT application number PCT / F12004 / 000726 and filed on 26 Nov., 2004 under 35 U.S.C. 120 and 365(c).FEDERALLY SPONSORED RESEARCH OR DEVELOPMENT [0002] Not applicable. REFERENCE TO SEQUENCE LISTING, A TABLE, OR A COMPUTER LISTING APPENDIX [0003] Not applicable. COPYRIGHT NOTICE [0004] A portion of the disclosure of this patent document contains material that is subject to copyright protection. The copyright owner has no objection to the facsimile reproduction by anyone of the patent document or patent disclosure as it appears in the Patent and Trademark Office, patent file or records, but otherwise reserves all copyright rights whatsoever. FIELD OF THE INVENTION [0005] The present invention relates generally to medicine and dosages thereof. More particularly, the invention relates to the using of m...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

"The patent describes a system that uses machine vision to identify and separate medicinal preparations and dosages. This can be done by taking pictures of medication in containers and analyzing them with software. The system can recognize different medications and display or transmit information about them. The technical effect of this invention is to provide a more efficient and accurate way to identify and manage medications."

Problems solved by technology

For example, without limitation, one problem with medication dosage is that tranquilizing and sleeping medicine is routinely given to people, and although they are ordered by the prescription to take only as needed, these users continually take these medicines.

When these users are older people, they can become drowsy and, because of their degraded mobility, are for example more liable to falling.

When the patient removes his medicine from the device to take, he is not informed of medication information, and this type of device does not prevent the patient from forgetting to take the medicine.

In these solutions medicine information is also not included with the medication, and it can be difficult for patients with several medications to remember the instructions for all of their tablets.

Also, other problems exist in current systems.

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