Drug recognition device and method

A drug recognition method comprising:

• an illumination control step of sequentially switching a plurality of illumination directions which surround a drug having a stamped character thereon and in which an illumination unit can illuminate the drug;
• an imaging step of repeatedly capturing an image of the drug illuminated by the illumination unit whenever the illumination direction is switched in the illumination control step;
• a feature image extraction step of extracting a feature image corresponding to a shadow of the stamped character from the captured image in each illumination direction which is acquired in the imaging step;
• a feature image integration step of integrating the feature images in each illumination direction which are extracted in the feature image extraction step to generate an integrated image;
• and
• a recognition step of recognizing the stamped character on the basis of the integrated image generated in the feature image integration step and recognizing the type of the drug on the basis of the result of recognizing the stamped character,
• wherein the illumination unit includes a first illumination unit and a second illumination unit, the first illumination unit causes illumination light to be incident on the drug at a first incident angle in the illumination directions surrounding the drug, and the second illumination unit causes illumination light to be incident on the drug at a second incident angle, which is different from the first incident angle, in the illumination directions surrounding the drug, and
• the illumination control step includes a step of performing switching of the illumination direction of the first illumination unit in a state in which the second illumination unit is turned off, and a step of performing switching of the illumination direction of the second illumination unit in a state in which the first illumination unit is turned off.