Printed steganography applied for the authentication of identity photos in face verification

Steganography methods are proposed for the authentication of the holder´s photo in an ICAO-consistent (travel) document. The embedded message is heavily influenced by the print-scan process, as the electronic image is first printed to be included into the document (or identity card) and is scanned next to constitute the reference template in an automatic face verification procedure. Two sufficiently robust steganography methods are designed, modifications of the “Fujitsu method” and the “triangle net” method. A third method, a commercial Digimarc tool is also applied. The methods are tested w.r.t. to face image authentication ability in a face verification procedure, using two commercial biometric SDK-s. Test results demonstrate the feasibility in biometric verification and high authentication quality of proposed approach.