Automated Paper-Based Watermark Extraction and Processing

The boom of digital market and rapid expansion and demand of digital content consumption have many requirements for automated content processing, cataloguing, authenticating, indexing, etc.. Digital watermarking and fingerprinting techniques are being explored to authenticate and detect features in digital objects. This is similar to the analogue paper-based watermarking technique that was invented in the 13th century in Italy for the identification of the workers. This paper presents a framework for the digitisation, extraction and graphical representation of paper-based watermark designs. With a general overview of the framework by Hiary and Ng (2005), the paper focuses on automated processes which determine the configuration of processing parameters in order to allow optimal content processing without time-consuming manual intervention. With a machine readable graphical representation of the watermark, cataloguing and indexing of these heritage resources can be enhanced with the ease of digital content retrieval functionalities for scholarly usages and many other advantages of digital technologies including distribution and preservation