2015 2nd International Conference on Signal Processing and Integrated Networks (SPIN)

Automatic Indian Currency Denomination Recognition System based on Artificial

Neural Network
MrigankaGogoi1, Syed Ejaz Ali2,Subra Mukherjee*
2
PG student, Dept. of ECE, School of Technology, Assam Don Bosco University, Guwahati, India
1,*
Asst. Professor, Dept. of ECE, School of Technology, Assam Don Bosco University, Guwahati, India
mriganka.gogoi@dbuniversity.ac.in ,ejazali724@gmail.com,subra.mukherjee@dbuniversity.ac.in

Abstract— Automatic detection and recognition of Indian Amongst the various security features shown in Fig.1,
currency note has gained a lot of research attention in recent one of the most non discriminating features unique for each
years particularly due to its vast potential applications. In this Indian currency note is the I.D Mark. Each currency has a
paper we introduce a new recognition method for Indian unique shape as the I.D. Mark as mentioned in Fig.2.
currency using computer vision. It is shown that Indian
currencies can be classified based on a set of unique non
discriminating features such as color, dimension and most
importantly the Identification Mark (unique for each
denomination) mentioned in RBI guidelines. Firstly the
dominant color and the aspect ratio of the note are extracted.
After this the segmentation of the portion of the note
containing the unique I.D. Mark is done. From these
segmented image, feature extraction is done using Fourier
Descriptors. As each note has a unique shape as the I.D. Mark,
the classification of these shapes is done with the help of
Artificial Neural Network. After feature extraction, the
denominations are recognized based on the developed
algorithm. The success rate of the proposed system is 97%
requiring a processing time of 2.52 seconds.

Keywords—Currency Recognition; Artificial Neural Network

(ANN); Feature Extraction; Identification Mark Detector (
IMD);Fourier Descriptor. Fig.1: Security features in a banknote[1]

I. INTRODUCTION

In this age of technological advancement, when

automatic machines have become an integral part of our life,
an automatic currency identifier is the need of the hour for
all financial institutions and in every field where monetary
transaction is involved. Moreover such a system could be of
great help to visually impaired section of the society.
Identifying the denomination of currency note seems to be a
very simple task for human beings as our brain is
extraordinarily proficient in learning new things and
identifying them later without much difficulty. However in
computer vision, this same task becomes very challenging,
particularly when the note becomes old, degraded, defaced,
faded and torn edges due to wear and tear.
Every Indian Currency has certain security features
which help in identification and recognition of the
denomination. An example of security features for a Rs. 100
is shown in Fig. 1.
Also each denomination has a dominant color. A bank
note can have different colors distributed over its surface;
however the color component which is present in maximum
number defines the dominant color of a particular currency.
For instance the dominant color of Rs. 500 is “Green”.
Also as mentioned in [1] each Indian currency has
unique dimension.
Fig. 2: Identification mark for various denominations [1]
Though a number of works has been done in this field, the
need for a robust and efficient system still remains an open
challenge.
Most of the work in literature is based on finding the
dominant color component of a particular currency,
however the problem that lies in color based recognition is
the increased error rate for old currencies as the color of old
currencies generally become faded due to wear and tear.
Also sometimes depending upon classification based on
dimension or texture might give inaccurate results as the
notes undergo a lot of wear and tear during handling.
In this paper, we propose a method wherein we have
developed a method for denomination classification based
on not just one feature but rather using a combination of
three features i.e. “Color”, “Aspect Ratio” and most
importantly the “I.D. Mark”.

978-1-4799-5991-4/15/$31.00 ©2015 IEEE 553

 2015 2nd International Conference on Signal Processing and Integrated Networks (SPIN)
We firstly localize the bank note and then we extract the
color feature. Then we obtain the dimensions of the note and
calculate the aspect ratio.
After this, we segment the portion of the note wherein the
I.D. Mark is present. Then we obtain our most important
feature, i.e. the shape of I.D. mark with the help of “Fourier
Descriptor”. Once the feature extraction is done we employ
Artificial Neural Network to classify the shapes and based
on this classification, we recognize the denominations of
various Indian Currencies.
The remaining of the paper is organized as follows: section
II discusses some of the related work in this field. Section
IIIgives an overview of the methodology employed
followed by section IV where we discuss about the various
features and the respective feature extraction methods. In
Section V, we discuss the experimental results followed by
Conclusion in section VI.
II. STATE -OF- ART: OVERVIEW
Over the years a lot of researches have been done in this
field of Currency note recognition. The authors have done
recognition based on Color, texture, security features etc.
Here in this section we mention a few related works in this
field.
Hanish and Padam[2] has done currency note recognition by
using the color feature of the currency note. Parminder
Singh Reel et al.[3] employed a method to recognize
currency note based on heuristic analysis of characters and
digits of serial number of Indian currency note. The main
advantages of using heuristic analysis are increase
computational performance, exclude different properties
which are invalid and reduced time for solving problems. In
another work [4] made a comparative study on various
currency recognition technique. Here the authors proposed a
method for currency recognition using ensemble neural
network (ENN) particularly for Bangladesh currency.
Ensemble neural network consist of number of neural
network and each neural network is trained independently.
Vipin Kumar Jain et al.(2013) employed a method for
currency denomination identification by using Neural
network matching technique and pattern recognition[5].
KishanChakraborty et al. [6] made a review on the recent
developments in currency recognition system. Here they
have found that the most common method for currency note
recognition is by using Artificial Neural Network (ANN).
In most of the color based recognition methods, the RGB
color model is employed. However in [7], the authors
developed a method for recognition wherein theyconverted
theimage from RGB color space to HSV color space before
feature extraction. They used HSV color space because it is
close to human conceptual understanding of color. In [8],
the authors proposed a method for currency note recognition
by using ANN. Here a special linear transformation function
is adapted to wipe out the noise pattern from background
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without affecting the note original feature. The edge
detection feature along with linear transformation is a better
feature extraction technique and helps to keep notes look
similar in varying conditions.
Faiz M. Hasanuzzaman et al. proposed a component based
framework for banknote recognition by using Speeded Up
Robust Features (SURF). SURF feature divides the image
into components and then matches test image with original
image component. The SURF features are invariant to
conditions of image occlusion, image rotation, changes of
scaling, illumination and the viewpoint [9]. In [10] also the
authors have employed neural network for recognition of
the currency notes. They have used Ensemble Neural
Network ENN for this they have used three characteristics
size, color and texture characteristics. Image histogram is
used for calculating the plentitude of different color in
currency note and Markov chain concept to model texture of
paper currency as random process.
Ahmed Ali et al.(2013) proposed a method to recognize
Pakistani currency note in which they have used KNN
classifier that is a nearest neighborhood classifier[11]. In
[12], the authors have proposed a technique for color image
retrieval. Here color indexing techniques is used by which
images are extracted on the basis of color content of the
image.
Ms. TruptiPathrabe et al.(2011) developed an embedded
system for currency note recognition. In this method they
have used HSV(Hue, Saturation, Value) color space instead
of RGB color space because HSV color space is more closer
to human conceptual understanding of colors[13].
FaridGarcía-Lamont et al.(2012) introduced a currency
recognition method for Mexican currency note. In this
method they have used two feature i.e color and texture
using RGB model and Local Binary Pattern (LBP)
respectively to recognize the note. The classification is done
using LVQ (Linear Vector Quantization) network which is a
supervised version of vector quantization. Since the color
and texture feature is combined the recognition rate is
improved as compared to single color and texture analysis.
They have got 97.50% recognition performance [14].
Suriya Singh et al presented an application for Indian
currency recognition on mobile. For this they have used
visual Bag of Words (BoW) recognition method. Here they
have used GrabCut algorithm to segment the foreground
from background. This process of segmentation work so
well that it can segment image from the cluttered
background. After testing 2584 images they have got 96.7%
accuracy [15].
 2015 2nd International Conference on Signal Processing and Integrated Networks (SPIN)
III. PROPOSED METHODOLOGY FOR INDIAN CURRENCY
RECOGNITION
The word recognition means to identify objects in an image.
The process of recognition starts with image processing
techniques. The different steps in currency recognition are:
Figure3: General Flow diagram of proposed methodology
The various steps involved are explained below:
• Image Acquisition: It is a process of acquiring
image from a currency note by using digital camera.
The image is stored for further processing.Here the
image is acquired with a digital camera of 14MP. A
database of 50 images of each Indian Currency notes
(Rs. 20,50,100,500,1000) consisting of old, new,
blurred, faded notes, etc are taken for
experimentation and testing.
• Image Pre-Processing: Image pre-processing is
done to enhance some image features important for
further processing and analysis. In image pre-
processing size of the image is reduced and noise is
removed that may have appeared in the image while
transferring. Also the currency notes are localized
while removing the background.
• Color Feature Extraction: Here the dominant color
(DC) of the currency note is found. Then the
dimensions are found and Aspect Ratio is calculated.
• Image Segmentation: The Portion of the currency
containing the I.D. Mark is segmented.
• I.D. Mark Detection: From the segmented image
feature extraction is done using Fourier Descriptor.
Thus IMD is found.
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• Shape Classification: After the IMD feature
extraction is done, the shape classification is done
employing Artificial Neural Network.
• Decision Algorithm: Based on these three unique
features a decision algorithm is finally employed to
recognize the denomination of the Currency note.
IV. FEATURE EXTRACTION TECHNIQUES
Feature extraction is one of the most pivotal tasks in design
of CRS as it directly affects the performance of the classifier
directly. In this paper we have considered three Features:
Dominant Color (DC), Aspect Ratio (AR) and the
Identification Mark (IMD).
A. Color Feature Extraction
To determine the dominant color of Indian Currency notes,
we firstly need to employ a color model and keeping into
consideration the purpose the RGB model is the most
adequate model.
In RGB model each color appears with its primary spectral
components of RED, GREEN and BLUE. The model is
based in a Cartesian co-ordinate system; the RGB color
space is represented in Fig. 4 as a cube where, black is
located at the origin and white in the opposite corner to the
origin. The RED, GREEN and BLUE components are the
base vectors that form the RGB space. The colors are the
points located inside the cube defined by the vectors that
extend from the origin. For convenience we assume that all
the colors vectors are normalized; thus the cube in Fig. 4 is a
unit cube [16].The color of every pixel is a linear
combination of the three dimensional base vectors RED,
GREEN and BLUE.Thus based on experimentation on
various currency notes we have found the dominant color of
each currency as tabulated in Table 1.
Figure 4: RGB color space
B. Aspect Ratio
Each Indian denomination has a unique dimension. So, we
have considered this as also one of the feature for
Classification. However wear and tear due to handlings
sometimes reduces the original size of note, so we
considered a threshold value based on experimentation.
Unlike height and width, the aspect ratio of a currency note
is independent of the distance from which the image is
taken. In our experiment we have calculate the aspect ratio
as:
 2015 2nd International Conference on Signal Processing and Integrated Networks (SPIN)

We have calculated the ARfor different currencies and
based on extensive experimentation we have set a threshold
range for each denomination. The standard value according
to RBI guidelines and the obtained threshold after
experimentation is mentioned in Table2.
TABLE 1: Dominant color of Indian Currency Notes
i. Segmentation
Here firstly based on experimentation a window of a
particular dimension is selected in the note where the I.D
mark is present. Then based on this dimension the portion of
the currency where the I.D. mark is present is segmented as
shown in Fig.5.

Dominant Figure 5: Segmentation and extraction of I.D. Mark

Denomination Notation Color
ii. I.D. Mark Feature Extraction
RED Once the segmentation is done, feature extraction is done
DC20
using “Fourier Descriptor”. Here we mainly focus on the
shape of the I.D. Mark present in the segmented portion of
DC50 RED the image. Many shape representations and retrieval method
exist; however most of those methods etiher do not
represent the shape well or are difficult for normalization
DC100 BLUE (making matching hard). Among them Fourier Descriptors
allow both well representation and well normalization.
For a given shape signature S(t) , t= 0,1,2,……,..,L
DC500 GREEN assuming its normalized to N points in the sampling stage,
the Discrete Fourier Transform of S(t) is given by :

DC1000 RED

TABLE 2: Threshold values of Aspect Ratio and RBI Std values

The coefficients Un, n=0, 1, 2,…..N-1, are usually called
Fourier Descriptors (FD) of the shape.
Denomination Notation Min Max RBI
Value Value Std
iii. ANN based Shape Classification and
Rs. 20 AR20 0.40 0. 43 0.42 Matching
Rs. 50 AR50 0.47 0.50 0.49 The identification of the shape obtained by extracting
Rs. 100 AR100 0.45 0.48 0.46 theunique Identification Mark is done by using ANN
Rs. 500 AR500 0.42 0.44 0.43 (Artificial Neural Network).
Rs. 1000 AR1000 0.39 0.42 0.41 Artificial Neural Network is a machine learning technique
which functions same as human brain. Human brain is
complex structures consist of billions of neurons connected
C. Unique Identification Mark Feature Extraction with synapses. The same concept is used to build where
Identification mark is a unique feature present on left of perceptrons or nodes or neurons are connected in a network
watermark window on all notes except Rs10. This feature is from input to output layer. Thus ANN is an interconnected
in various shapes for various denominations such as Rs 20- group of nodes where each node represents an artificial
vertical rectangle, Rs 50-Square, Rs 100-Triangle, Rs 500- neuron and arrow represents a connection from output of
Circle and Rs 1000-Diamond. The different shape for one neuron to input of all the neuron in the next layer. The
different notes is shown in the Fig.1. This feature is connections are weighted and job for each node is to
basically is in intaglio printing (high pressure printing) calculate some output value depending on weighted input
which raises the surface of the paper and helps the visually values. Neural network basically consist of three layers i.e
impaired people to identify the denomination. This feature input, hidden and output layer.
can be used for recognition of currency note from a bunch ANN works basically for approximation of unknown
of currency note. complex function and pattern recognition. Learning
This is one of the most unique features of Indian currency algorithm is used to train the network to function in a more
notes which differentiate one denomination from other. And desirable way. Training is a process to update the weights
it is this cue we have employed to recognize the most and tries to find values that give us good result. There are
unique feature of the Denomination of the currency, i.e. the two types of learning methods to train a network depending
I.D. Mark. on situation and application. The first method is
unsupervised learning where we don’t know if a certain

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 2015 2nd International Conference on Signal Processing and Integrated Networks (SPIN)

input should map to some distinct output and let the network 17. Repeat steps 7 to 9.
to train itself. The second method is supervised learning 18. Obtain IMD.
where we have a set of training data. The set contains some {“Shape = Square
input examples connected with correct output and the output IMD50=1
value is often referred to as target value. In our project feed- Else IMD50=0 }
forward back propagation neural network has been used for
pattern association, classification and mapping. Back 19. If AR matches AR20
propagation is a method where with the help of derivatives 20. Repeat steps 7 to 9.
and mean square error of the output makes a gradient search 21. Obtain IMD.
to find new values to the weights. {“Shape = Rectangle
IMD20=1
Else IMD20=0 }

22. If AR matches AR1000

23. Repeat steps 7 to 9.
24. Obtain IMD.
If
{“Shape = Diamond
IMD1000=1
Else IMD1000=0 }
25. If DC= GREEN and AR matches AR500 and
Fig.ure 6: Structure of Artificial Neural Network IMD500=1,
Then “Rs. 500 note detected”
In our work, the network employed is a feed forward ElseifDC= Blue and AR matches AR100 and
network using a log-sigmoid activation function. The neural IMD100=1,
network is trained with the Fourier descriptors obtained Then “Rs. 100 note detected”
from 23 images of each denomination. Elseif DC= RED and AR matches AR50 and
IMD50=1,
V. PROPOSED RECOGNITION ALGORITHM Then “Rs. 50 note detected”
Elseif DC= RED and AR matches AR20 and
The complete algorithm for our proposed Indian Currency IMD20=1,
Recognition is given below: Then “Rs. 20 note detected”
1. Obtain the image of the currency note Elseif DC= RED and AR matches AR1000 and
2. Extract the Region of Interest by thresholding IMD1000=1,
method. Then “Rs. 1000 note detected”
3. Obtain the dimension of the image. ELSE “NOT A CURRENCY NOTE”.
4. Find dominant Color (DC)
5. Calculate Aspect Ratio(AR) VI. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
6. If DC= GREEN and AR matches AR500 The experimental stage consist on classifying a test set of
Then, 115 images of Indian banknotes; 23 per class denomination.
7. Now segment the portion containing I.D. Mark. In this set there are new, old, faded and worn out notes. The
8. Extract features using Fourier Descriptors. experimental results are as shown in Table 3.
9. Classify shapesusing ANN Feed forward network.
10. Obtain IMD TABLE 3: Success Rates
If
{“Shape = Circle Denomination Success Rate
IMD500=1 Rs. 20 96%
Else IMD500=0 Rs.50 96%
11. If DC= Blue and AR matches AR100 Rs. 100 98%
12. Repeat steps 7 to 9. Rs.500 98%
13. Obtain IMD. Rs. 1000 95%
{“Shape = Triangle
IMD100=1 Given below are some more experimental results of various
Else IMD100=0 stages. In Fig. 7, we show how the unique I.D. Mark for a
14. If DC= RED 100 rupee note is segmented, while Fig.9, 10 and 11 shows
15. Find AR the neural network training for 10,000 iterations,
16. If AR matches AR50 performance graph and training plot respectively. Detection

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 2015 2nd International Conference on Signal Processing and Integrated Networks (SPIN)
and classification of the shape of I.D mark for a 100 rupee
note is shown in Fig. 8.
Figure 7: Segmentation of I.D.Mark Figure 8:Detection of
I.D. Mark in Matlab
Figure 9: Neural Network Training
The experimental results obtained based on the proposed
method are satisfactory. Also Success rate is approximately
97% and the time complexity of our algorithm is 2.52
seconds. The method has been tested on a wide variety of
notes keeping in mind the complexities. Also the system has
been tested with other objects like a blue, red and green
color paper having dimensions similar to Indian
currenciesand the algorithm could correctly classify them as
“Not a NOTE”.
VII. CONCLUSION
This paper proposes a novel method for detection and
recognition of Indian Currencies. By using a computer
Vision approach, color, aspect ratio and the Unique
identification mark was extracted. And based on the
algorithm developed the currencies were correctly classified
with a success rate of approximately 97%. The processing
time taken is 2.52 seconds. The recognition is invariant to
image rotation as we have employed Fourier Descriptors for
feature extraction of unique I.D. Mark. In Future we would
like to extend the work in real time and also decrease the
processing time.
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Figure 10: Performance graph Figure 11: Training plot
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