Giuseppe Schirripa Spagnolo

Hylemetry versus Biometry: a new method to certificate the lithography authenticity

When we buy an artwork object a certificate of authenticity contain specific details about the artwork. Unfortunately, these certificates are often exchanged between similar artworks: the same document is supplied by the seller to certificate the originality. In this way the buyer will have a copy of an original certificate to attest that the not original artwork is an original one. A solution for this problem would be to insert a system that links together the certificate and a specific artwork. To do this it is necessary, for a single artwork, to find unique, unrepeatable, and unchangeable characteristics. In this paper we propose a new lithography certification based on the color spots distribution, which compose the lithography itself. Due to the high resolution acquisition media available today, it is possible using analysis method typical of speckle metrology. In particular, in verification phase it is only necessary acquiring the same portion of lithography, extracting the verification information, using the private key to obtain the same information from the certificate and confronting the two information using a comparison threshold. Due to the possible rotation and translation it is applied image correlation solutions, used in speckle metrology, to determine translation and rotation error and correct allow to verifying extracted and acquired images in the best situation, for granting correct originality verification.

Designing of diffractive optical element for the generation of uniform arrays of beams

A diffractive optical elements (DOEs), permits to change a wave front by means of diffraction. The proposed method has the advantage of not requiring complex computation and programming. In particular the designed process is made without computer iterative methods. The DOE, implemented by the proposed algorithm, consists of cells of equal size. Each cell is subdivided into appropriate parts. The average phase of these parts is related to the phase of the complex amplitude. The DOE phase can be easily computed according to simple formulas. In the paper designing phases and numerical simulation are reported. In particular the effect of the DOE structure quantization is considered.

Smartphone Sensors for Stone Lithography Authentication

Nowadays mobile phones include quality photo and video cameras, access to wireless networks and the internet, GPS assistance and other innovative systems. These facilities open them to innovative uses, other than the classical telephonic communication one. Smartphones are a more sophisticated version of classic mobile phones, which have advanced computing power, memory and connectivity. Because fake lithographs are flooding the art market, in this work, we propose a smartphone as simple, robust and efficient sensor for lithograph authentication. When we buy an artwork object, the seller issues a certificate of authenticity, which contains specific details about the artwork itself. Unscrupulous sellers can duplicate the classic certificates of authenticity, and then use them to “authenticate” non-genuine works of art. In this way, the buyer will have a copy of an original certificate to attest that the “not original artwork” is an original one. A solution for this problem would be to insert a system that links together the certificate and the related specific artwork. To do this it is necessary, for a single artwork, to find unique, unrepeatable, and unchangeable characteristics. In this article we propose an innovative method for the authentication of stone lithographs. We use the color spots distribution captured by means of a smartphone camera as a non-cloneable texture of the specific artworks and an information management system for verifying it in mobility stone lithography.

Determination of the sequence of line crossings by means of 3D laser profilometry

The determination of the sequence of line crossings is still a current problem in the field of forensic documents examination. This paper presents the potentiality of the 3D micro-topography to resolve the writing order of signatures (if partially superimposed), to detect the tampering of manuscripts (if the added inscription superimposes itself on parts already written), to analyze pressure variation, and to identify strokes in handwritten. The system used, in this paper for creating 3D micro-topography, is based on conoscopic holography. It is a non-contact three-dimensional measuring system that allows producing holograms, even with incoherent light, with fringe periods that can be measured precisely to determine the exact distance to the point measured. This technique is suitable to obtain 3D micro-topography with high resolution also on surfaces with unevenness reflectivity (which is usual on the surface of the handwritten document). The proposed technique is able to obtained 3D profile in non-invading way. Therefore, the original draft do not be physically or chemically modified, allowing the possibility of multi-analysis in different time, also in case of forensic analysis with the necessity to preserving the original sample. The experiments performed with line crossings data base show that the proposed method is able of positive identification of writing sequence in the majority of the tests. When we have not had a positive identification, the result has been inconclusive. The proposed technique, if correctly used, does not supply false positive or probable identifications. The possible results are only: positive identification and inconclusive.

LED applications in road and railway signals: is it possible to fit specifications?

In recent times, the transportation industry has generated a number of developments involving new technology in signaling. Important developments have involved the production of light by means of light emitting diode (LED). Since the heat from the junction must be dissipated into the ambient somehow, changing the ambient temperature affects the junction temperature and hence the emitted light. When the LEDs have been used in the railway or traffic signals, the optical proprieties of these have to maintain more rigorous specifications. The junction temperature of the power LEDs affects the devices luminous flux of the device. To develop signals, using LED as light source, able to respect intensity specifications it is not simple. In fact, then shift in intensity, over the specified temperature range, can be greater than the magnitude of specification. In this paper, we describe problems of the temperature dependent changes of LED intensity. Besides we will introduce an innovative technical to allow the use of the LEDs in applications with rigorous specifications.

Designing of binary diffractive optical elements for beams performing

At present, the progress in optics is associated with wide use of diffractive optical elements (DOEs) generated by means of computer resources. DOEs are optical elements, which modify the wave field by diffraction. They allow the conversion of the incident wave into a transmitted wave which, after free-space propagation, has a desired distribution of its amplitude. If the wave fields and their propagation are represented as digital data, computer generated DOEs carrying out complex optical tasks can be calculated. Their potentialities are dependent by fabrication technique used, which must ensure the maximum of diffraction efficiency and of the signal-to-noise ratio in the generated optical signal. It is well known that, generally speaking, they are not quite tractable in analytical terms. For this reason, specialized numerical algorithms have been devised for designing such elements. In this paper we present a DOE design method, which not use computer iterative methods. Starting from the knowledge of the expression of the propagated field on image plane, we use simple formulas to obtain the entire information necessary to characterize the desired DOE. The DOE designed with the proposed method can equate an arbitrary complex amplitude transmission T(r) and has higher imaging accuracy than other DOEs. Even if it is possible studying any level combination, the aim of this paper is to summarize the results of simulation experiments which were carried out only to test the binary level diffractive optical elements (DOEs). In particular, starting from an incident Gaussian Beam, it is proposed a binary phase DOE which allows obtaining a flat emerging field, in a well-defined region after the DOE.

IR Fringe Projection for 3D Face Recognition

Facial recognitions of people can be used for the identification of individuals, or can serve as verification e.g. for access controls. The process requires that the facial data is captured and then compared with stored reference data. Different from traditional methods which use 2D images to recognize human faces, this article shows a known shape extraction methodology applied to the extraction of 3D human faces conjugated with a non conventional optical system able to work in “invisible” way. The proposed method is experimentally simple, and it has a low‐cost set‐up.

Image authentication by means of fragile CGH watermarking

In this paper we propose a fragile marking system based on Computer Generated Hologram coding techniques, which is able to detect malicious tampering while tolerating some incidental distortions. A fragile watermark is a mark that is readily altered or destroyed when the host image is modified through a linear or nonlinear transformation. A fragile watermark monitors the integrity of the content of the image but not its numerical representation. Therefore the watermark is designed so that the integrity is proven if the content of the image has not been tampered. Since digital images can be altered or manipulated with ease, the ability to detect changes to digital images is very important for many applications such as news reporting, medical archiving, or legal usages. The proposed technique could be applied to Color Images as well as to Gray Scale ones. Using Computer Generated Hologram watermarking, the embedded mark could be easily recovered by means of a Fourier Transform. Due to this fact host image can be tampered and watermarked with the same holographic pattern. To avoid this possibility we have introduced an encryption method using a asymmetric Cryptography. The proposed schema is based on the knowledge of original mark from the Authentication

Measurement of mass diffusion coefficients by digital moiré

In order to measure small diffusion coefficients of miscible fluids, in this paper we propose an improved version of digital projection moiré. The system uses a simple and flexible fringe generator realized by means of a video projector with a modification of projection optic. The fringe patterns are projected on the bottom of a ground glass plate. The phase object (diffusion cell) is placed in front of the ground glass (in other words, in front of the fringe pattern), which is imaged by a digital video camera. Grating patterns, during the evolution of diffusion phenomena, are captured by a CCD camera and stored in a computer at different times. With the aid of signal demodulating techniques, the images are processed to obtain the diffusion coefficients. The theoretical aspects of the method are presented and the relationship between the fringe shift and the diffusion coefficient is derived. Furthermore, we report some experiments conducted for demonstrating the usefulness of the system.