APPARATUS AND METHOD FOR DOCUMENT READING AND AUTHENTICATION

Apparatus and a method are disclosed for reading and authenticating documents. These documents include passports, driver's licenses, identity documents and documents of value, and they are read to obtain and verify information recorded thereon, and to test for and detect security features thereon to determine if such documents are genuine, counterfeit or have been altered. A first image is taken of a document under evaluation and, from the image, the size of the document is determined, and that defines the document as being part of a smaller class of documents having the same size. Reference documents for all documents types are segmented and a correlation number is determined for each segment. A correlation number is determined for each segment of the first document having fixed information, and these correlation numbers are compared with correlation numbers of corresponding segments of the reference documents that have the same size as the first document. The identity of the document is determined from the comparison of the correlation numbers. Using the document identity, a set of security attributes is retrieved and the identified document is tested using the attributes to determine if the document is genuine, counterfeit or has been altered.