INFRARED ENCODING FOR EMBEDDING MULTIPLE VARIABLE DATA INFORMATION COLLOCATED IN PRINTED DOCUMENTS

• Main Authors: BALA RAJA, BLURFRUSHAN FARZIN, ESCHBACH REINER
• Format: Patent
• Language: English
• Published: 11.12.2008
• Subjects: CALCULATING; COMPUTING; COUNTING; HANDLING RECORD CARRIERS; PHYSICS; PRESENTATION OF DATA; RECOGNITION OF DATA; RECORD CARRIERS

The teachings as provided herein relate to a watermark embedded in an image that has the property of being relatively indecipherable under normal light by including a distraction pattern, and yet remains decipherable under infrared illumination when viewed by a suitable infrared sensitive instrument. This infrared mark comprises, a substrate reflective to infrared radiation, a foreground colorant mixture printed as an image upon the substrate, a background colorant mixture and a distraction colorant mixture. The foreground colorant mixture layer in connection with the substrate has a property of strongly reflecting infrared illumination, as well as a property of low contrast under normal illumination against the background colorant mixture as printed in close spatial proximity to the foreground colorant mixture pattern. A distraction colorant mixture is selected to have a substantially negligent effect on the infrared response of the foreground and background color mixtures, but as having a substantially noticeable effect of the visual response of the foreground and background color mixtures when provided as a distraction pattern, such that a resultant collocated image rendered substrate suitably exposed to an infrared illumination, will yield a discernable image evident as a infrared mark to a suitable infrared sensitive device, but remain undecipherable under normal ambient light.