Stamp plating software development

The project is to find a way to identify a particular stamp from a scan. The stamps in question are Victorian penny reds or 2d blues and these were printed from line engraved plates. There were hundreds of these plates and although each stamp looks very similar, almost identical, because these metal plates were made by hand each has tiny flaws in the positioning or shape of letters for example that help identify the stamp to a specific plate. Luckily, there photographs online of most reference plates, but since there are hundreds of plates and 240 stamps per plate doing this task by hand is impossible. The project would therefore be to take each of the reference images and split this into 240 individual images. Also fortunately the position on a plate is designated by check letters at the bottom of the stamp, with first letter the row and the second the column, so stamps run from AA to TL (see attached image). Hence by having a database of every reference stamp and inputting a scan of an unknown, an image analysis routine could then be run to align and compare the unknown with every possible combination in the database and a % match calculated. In particular the shape and position of the check letters tends to be informative. The scans of unknowns, with modern scanners, are likely to be of much higher quality than the reference sheets (see attached) and this might compromise the ability to conduct this project but assessing feability would be good.