AR-based hologram detection on security documents using a mobile phone

Abstract

Holograms are used frequently in creating fraud resistant security documents, such as passports, ID cards or banknotes. The key contribution of this paper is a real time method to automatically detect holograms in images acquired with a standard smartphone. Following a robust algorithm for creating a tracking target, our approach evaluates an evolving stack of observations of the document to automatically determine the location and size of holograms. We demonstrate the plausibility of our method using a variety of security documents, which are common in everyday use. Finally, we show how suitable data can be captured in a novel mobile gaming experience and draw the link between serious applications and entertainment.