DIGITAL FINGERPRINTING OBJECT AUTHENTICATION AND ANTI-COUNTERFEITING SYSTEM

• US 20150117701A1
• Filed: 11/03/2014
• Published: 04/30/2015
• Est. Priority Date: 03/02/2012
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Alitheon, Inc.
• Original Assignee: RAF Technology, Incorporated (Constellation Software Incorporated)
• Inventors: ROSS, DAVID, ELMENHURST, BRIAN, TOCCI, MARK, FORBES, JOHN, ROSS, HEATHER WHEELOCK
• Granted Patent: US 9,443,298 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 382/100
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 50/60 Business processes related to postal services shipping G06Q10/083; franking apparatus G07B17/00
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 1/005 Robust watermarking, e.g. average attack or collusion attack resistant
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 2201/0065 Extraction of an embedded watermark; Reliable detection
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 2207/30128 Food products
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 2207/30144 Printing quality
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 2207/30148 Semiconductor; IC; Wafer
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 2207/30164 Workpiece; Machine component
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 2207/30204 Marker
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 7/0004 Industrial image inspection
• CPC Class Codes: G06V 10/225 based on a marking or identifier characterising the area
• CPC Class Codes: G06V 10/245 by locating a pattern; Special marks for positioning
• CPC Class Codes: G06V 20/46 Extracting features or characteristics from the video content, e.g. video fingerprints, representative shots or key frames
• CPC Class Codes: G06V 30/412 Layout analysis of documents structured with printed lines or input boxes, e.g. business forms or tables
• CPC Class Codes: G09C 5/00 Ciphering apparatus or methods not provided for in the preceding groups, e.g. involving the concealment or deformation of graphic data such as designs, written or printed messages
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 9/3247 involving digital signatures

Abstract

Improvements are disclosed for authentication of an object, verification of its provenance, and certification of the object as compliant with manufacturing standards. Or, an object may be reported as a suspected counterfeit. In one embodiment the system compares a digital fingerprint of the object, based in image capture, to digital fingerprints previously stored in a database and determines if the object has been registered before and is thus authentic. An object feature template may be created which has a list of features and attributes that are relevant for authenticating particular classes of objects. The object feature template can also be used to examine unregistered objects for signs of counterfeiting.

Claims

1. A computer implemented method comprising:

acquiring digital image data representing an image of at least a portion of a physical object;

selecting at least one authentication region of the image data;

processing the authentication region data so as to form a digital fingerprint of the object, wherein the digital fingerprint comprises;

data identifying at least one object feature within the authentication region, the data including a location of the object feature in the authentication region;

for each object feature, data identifying a plurality of locations of interest in the object feature; and

for each locations of interest, data identifying at least one fingerprint feature vector that describes a fingerprint feature extracted from the location of interest; and

storing the digital fingerprint of the object in an object database.

2. The method of claim 1 wherein, for each location of interest, the corresponding feature vector identifies at location and a shape of the extracted fingerprint feature.

3. The method of claim 2 including automatically selecting the authentication region and the corresponding object features in accordance with a predetermined object feature template (120, 223).

4. The method of claim 3 wherein the object feature template comprises a stored data structure that specifies a class of objects, at least one authentication region definition for the class of objects, and at least one feature location for digital fingerprinting the object.

5. The method of claim 3 wherein the object feature template defines a method of extracting information from a regions of interest, and methods for comparing such features at different points in time.

6. The method of claim 2 including storing the digital fingerprint without storing the acquired digital image data in the database.

7. The method of claim 2 wherein extracting a fingerprinting feature vector utilizes an algorithm among a class of algorithms now existing or later invented that is characterized by one or more of edge detection, corner detection, blob detection, wavelet features;

Gabor, gradient and steerable output filter histograms, scale-invariant feature transformation, active contours, shape contexts and parameterized shapes.

8. The method of claim 1 and further comprising:

accessing a digital fingerprint of a target object; and

comparing the digital fingerprint of the target object to the stored digital fingerprint to identify or authenticate the target object, thereby obviating comparing bitmap images of the two objects.

9. The method of claim 8 and wherein the comparing step includes utilizing an algorithm of a set of algorithms characterized by nearest neighbor, hashing, indexing feature sets with visual vocabularies, support vector machines, multilayer preceptor and random forests and ferns.

10. The method of claim 1, wherein at least one of the object features is subject to a predetermined manufacturing specification, and further comprising comparing the extracted fingerprint features to the predetermined manufacturing specification to determine whether the physical object complies with the predetermined manufacturing specification.

11. The method of claim 1 wherein the object comprises any one of government-issued documents, legal and financial documents, mail pieces, parcels, art, photographs, coins, currency, precious metals, gems, jewelry, apparel, mechanical parts, consumer goods, electronics, apparel, toys, integrated circuits, weapons, pharmaceuticals, drugs, chemicals, alcohol, tobacco and food and beverages.

12. A method comprising:

acquiring digital fingerprints of a plurality of known counterfeit objects of a given class; and

collecting the digital fingerprints to form a machine-readable counterfeit object database for use in detecting counterfeit objects of the same class.

13. The method of claim 12 wherein each acquired digital fingerprint comprises:

data identifying at least one object feature, the data including a location of the object feature on the corresponding object;

for each object feature, data identifying a plurality of locations of interest in the object feature; and

for each location of interest, data identifying at least one fingerprint feature vector that describes a fingerprint feature extracted from the location of interest on the corresponding known counterfeit object.

14. The method of claim 12 and further comprising:

acquiring a digital fingerprint of a target physical object;

querying the counterfeit object database based on the digital fingerprint of the target physical object; and

based on a response to the query, assessing whether or not the target physical object is likely to be a counterfeit.

15. The method of claim 12 and further comprising searching the counterfeit object database fingerprints and extracting patterns from them for use in building a database of common counterfeiting techniques for objects of the same class.

16. An apparatus comprising:

an image capture device arranged to generate image data responsive to a surface region of a physical object;

a processor having electronic access to the image data;

the processor arranged to execute stored instructions for processing the image data, the stored instructions arranged to cause the processor to—

access a predetermined object feature template associated with a class of objects of which the physical object is a member;

wherein the object feature template specifies an authentication region, at least one object feature within the authentication region, a method for extracting a fingerprint feature from the object feature, and a method for comparing the extracted feature to a reference feature;

based on the object feature template, identify a subset of the image data corresponding to the authentication region;

based on the object feature template, extract a feature from the subset of the image data; and

store extracted feature data defining the extracted feature in an object database.

17. The apparatus of claim 16 wherein the image capture device comprises at least one of a scanner, a camera, a specially-adapted sensor array such as CCD array, a microscope, a smart phone camera, a video camera, an x-ray machine, or any other device responsive to electromagnetic radiation.

18. The apparatus of claim 16 wherein the stored instructions further control the processor to compare the extracted feature data to reference feature data, without regard to the image data generated by the image capture device, to assess whether or not the physical object matches the reference feature data.

19. The apparatus of claim 18, wherein the assessment includes quantifying the comparison, and then comparing the quantified comparison result to a predetermined tolerance.

20. The apparatus of claim 18, wherein the extracted feature data defines a contiguous geometric shape and a location of the geometric shape in the authentication region.