Analysis of Spectral differences between Printers to detect the Counterfeit Medicine Packaging

Counterfeited medicine is a major threat to the society and economy. The easiest way of producing fake medicine is counterfeiting the packages of medicine. Medicine package printing is generally counterfeited by scanning the original printed package using camera, scanner etc. and then reprinting it. When different mobiles, camera or scanners are used to scan the original print and reproduced scanned reprinted sample, then the color values of reprinted samples are not the same as the original print sample . When the scanned objects are reprinted with different printers, the color values may be different depending on the profile of the printer. The spectral data of the solid inks used cannot be corrected as it is dependent on the inherent characteristics of the inks used. In this study, the original prints are scanned and then reprinted with the original (reference) printer, as well as in three different (test) printers, to show difference of spectrums. The inequality of spectrum of solid colors has been analyzed for printed and reprinted samples. The differences between RMSE values have been analyzed for same and different printers for different color range domains of the visible spectrum. It has been assumed that these differences could be used to detect whether a print is original or not. It may be used to protect medicine packaging from counterfeiting.