A Survey on PiCode: Picture-Embedding 2D Barcode

In this Review paper discusses about the last few years, conventional Two-Dimensional (2D) barcodes and some existing beautified QR codes. Quick Response (QR) code is widely used in many applications such as marketing, for industrial applications, retail applications, health care applications, manufacturing, and product tracking etc.This paper explains the basic concept of QR images, i.e. a recently proposed beautified QR code. We focus on revising preprocessing methods by proposing block division and source & channel coding methods. In the traditional decoding procedure decoding steps consist of image binarization, corner detection, perspective transformation and error correction. So the existing barcodes have some limitations, so the new picture-embedding 2D barcode system: Picode proposed. PiCode technology improves the aesthetic value of the picture embedded barcode. To preserve both the perceptual quality of the embedded image and the decoding robustness of the encoded message PiCode is designed with careful considerations. Advantage of using PiCode in advertisement business to link customers in a more interactive, interesting, and unique way. So the PiCode enable pictures/logo to be integrated with a 2D barcode to achieve enhanced visual appearance and high decoding reliability

MEJORA DE LA APARIENCIA VISUAL DE CÓDIGOS DE BARRAS BIDIMENSIONALES, QR-CODES, APLICANDO LA TÉCNICA DE TONOS MEDIOS

RESUMEN ANALÍTICOLos códigos de barras son imágenes binarias que contienen datos codificados. Su versión bidimensional más reciente conocida como código de rápida respuesta, QR (Quick Response) ofrece mayor ventaja respecto a otros códigos de esta clase en términos de capacidad de almacenamiento, tipos de datos a codificar y rapidez en decodificación. Recientemente, los códigos QR han recibido especial atención como alternativa publicitaria debido a que es posible decodificar la información mediante el uso de teléfonos inteligentes. Esta característica impulsó el uso de códigos QR como un medio rápido, sencillo y económico de conectar los usuarios de telefonía móvil con servicios, información y negocios en línea. Debido a su naturaleza binaria el código QR no es visualmente atractivo al usuario, ni aporta información directa sobre el tipo de contenido codificado en el mismo. Por tanto en este trabajo presenta una alternativa para mejorar la apariencia visual de los códigos QR, sin perder la calidad de la información o modificar la estructura del mismo. La propuesta consiste en técnicas de tonos medios para incrustar una imagen visualmente definida en el código QR, así como explorar las características de los algoritmos de decodificación de los mismos. El algoritmo toma ventaja del proceso de decodificación basado en la detección de la luminancia. Los valores de luminancia de la imagen a ser incrustada son modificados de acuerdo con la imagen del código QR. El resultado final de los algoritmos desarrollados es la incrustación de la imagen dentro del código QR. La distribución de pixeles a ser modificados es realizada aplicando máscaras de ruido azul. Los códigos QR generados son compatibles con lectores de códigos de barras bidimensionales estándar. Resultados experimentales muestran una mejora significativa de la apariencia visual de los códigos QR con tasas de decodificación similares a las de la versión dicromática original.PALABRAS CLAVES: Procesamiento digital de imágenes, Ruido azul, Medios tonos, Códigos QR, Librería zxing. IMPROVEMENT OF THE AESTHETIC APPEARANCE OF BIDIMENSIONAL BARCODES - (QR-CODES) BY APPLYING HALFTONE TECHNIQUESANALYTICAL SUMMARYBarcodes are binary images containing encoded data. The most recent two-dimensional version known as quick response code, QR (Quick Response) offers greater advantage than another similar codes in terms of storage capacity, data rates and faster decoding process. Recently, QR codes have received special attention as an alternative for advertising due to the possibility of decoding the information contained in the QR code, by using smartphones. This feature prompted the use of QR codes as a quick, simple and economical way to connect online mobile users with services, information and businesses. However, due to binary nature of QR code, it is not visually pleasing for users, and visual explicit information is not presented. Thus, this paper presents an alternative approach in order to improve the visual appearance of QR codes by no losing information or modifying its structure. The proposed method exploits both halftone techniques, in order to embed a visually defined image into a QR code, and also the characteristics of the decoding algorithms. This algorithm takes advantage by using the decoding process based on the luminance detection. The luminance values of image to be embedded are modified according to the QR code image. The final result of the proposed algorithm is a standard QR code, visually improved with embedded image. The distribution of pixels to be modified is performed by using blue noise masks. The generated QR codes are compatible with standard two-dimensional barcode readers. Experimental results show a significant improvement in the visual appearance of QR codes with decoding rates similar to those achieved with the original dichromatic version.KEYWORDS: Digital Image Processing, Blue noise, Halftones, QR codes, Zxing library. Forma de citar: Villarreal Dulcey, O. P., & Villamizar Mejía, R. (2014). Mejora de la apariencia visual de códigos de barras bidimensionales, QR-CODES, aplicando la técnica de tonos medios. En R, Llamosa Villalba (Ed.). Revista Gerencia Tecnológica Informática, 13(35), 33-45. ISSN 1657-8236

Removing Blurness in Picode Using Enhanced Modulation

ABSTRACT The appearance of a conventional 2D barcode pattern is often too obtrusive for integrating into an aesthetically designed advertisement. This is because of the fact that they didn't provide perceptual quality and decoding robustness of the encoded images. Besides, no human readable information is provided before the barcode is successfully decoded. There proposes a new picture-embedding 2D barcode, called PiCode, which mitigates these two limitations by equipping a scannable 2D barcode with a picturesque appearance. PiCode is designed with careful considerations on both the perceptual quality of the embedded image and the decoding robustness of the encoded message. Comparisons with existing beautified 2D barcodes show that PiCode achieves one of the best perceptual quality for the embedded image, and maintains a better trade-off between image quality and decoding robustness in various application conditions. The generation of PiCode thus enhances the customers to scan the code using their mobile phones in order to retrieve the data that carries behind them

A CRAM ON PICODE PICTURE EMBEDDING 2D BARCODE

Qrcodes which is called as fast feedback code is a 2D barcodes. Qrcodes have the info regarding the thing where it is connected. Qrcode include black squares set up in a square grid where info's exist in both straight and also upright parts of the photo. This paper presents the principle of QR codes, an automated approach to conceal details making use of QR codes and also to install QR codes right into colour photos with bounded chance of discovery mistake. The embedding techniques are created to be suitable with conventional with complete location protection. The decoding procedure will certainly initially draw out the QR code from the shade photo then translating is put on the QR code to obtain the details which is ingrained inside the QR code. In the standard decoding treatment deciphering actions include picture binarization, edge discovery, and viewpoint makeover as well as mistake improvement. So the existing barcodes have some restrictions, so the brand-new picture-embedding 2D barcode system: Picode suggested. PiCode innovation enhances the visual worth of the photo ingrained barcode

Design of data validation solutions using high density 2D colored codes and a (2,2) xor-based color interference visual cryptography scheme

Tese (doutorado)—Universidade de Brasília, Faculdade de Tecnologia, Departamento de Engenharia Elétrica, 2018.A validação de dados nos sistemas de informação utiliza majoritariamente algoritmos criptográficos em sistemas que, geralmente, não utilizam materiais não eletrônicos como parte da infraestrutura do criptossistema. Nesse trabalho, foram desenvolvidos dois sistemas de armazenamento e recuperação de dados através da proposta de uma nova tecnologia de códigos de barra colorido bidimensional e de um novo esquema de criptografia visual. Os códigos de barras bidimensionais têm sido amplamente estudados, mas ainda continuam sem contar com um padrão que consiga transmitir alta quantidade de informação em pequenos espaços impressos. As aplicações desse modelo de transmissão tem como motivação a necessidade de armazenar (e recuperar) uma alta quantidade de informação em pequenas áreas impressas, como por exemplo, para utilização de dados criptográficos que sejam processados sem conexão e armazenados em pequenos espaços impressos, como os de caixas de remédios ou caixas de cigarros. O código de barras colorido 2D proposto nesse trabalho é chamado de High Density 2 Dimensional Code (HD2DC) e possui 8 diferentes tamanhos. O HD2DC permite a utilização de 5 ou 8 cores em cada tamanho e conta com o algoritmo de correção de erro Reed-Solomon com 3 diferentes níveis (10%, 20% e 30%). O HD2DC foi desenvolvido com o objetivo de ser um padrão de código de barras colorido 2D para operações de transmissão de grande quantidade de informações em pequenas ou médias áreas de impressão. Criptografia visual é uma técnica que cifra uma imagem secreta em duas ou mais imagens chave. A decodificação de qualquer esquema de criptografia visual depende do sistema visual humano e a maioria das propostas existentes consideram para a decodificação a utilização da sobreposição de duas ou mais lâminas físicas com n x n (n ≥ 2) pixels expandidos. O esquema de criptografia visual proposto nesse trabalho considera a utilização de duas imagens. A primeira é uma lâmina física feita por uma impressão colorida em Policloreto de Polivinila (PVC) transparente de 3 milímetros, enquanto que a segunda é uma imagem colorida apresentada na tela do visor de um smartphone. Ambas as imagens não geram expansão de pixels. A obtenção das melhores cores utilizadas nesse criptossistema foi realizada através de estudos físicos do comportamento da interferência de cor entre a tela do smartphone e a cor utilizada na impressão do PVC transparente. Essa nova proposta possui um alto nível de usabilidade para validação de dados em transações eletrônicas e conta com um custo muito baixo de implementação. Um sistema robusto de validação de dados é criado quando é combinada a criptografia visual proposta com o HD2DC. O HD2DC tem a capacidade de armazenar uma das imagens chave, no caso a que deve ser mostrada no visor do celular, essa arquitetura de codificação aumenta a percepção de segurança e explora a usabilidade do celular por meio da utilização da câmera e da tela como ferramentas para mostrar a imagem cifrada da criptografia visual.Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)Digital data validation generally requires that algorithms are ran into on cryptographic systems that, usually, do not use non-electronic devices as part of their information security infrastructure. This work presents two information storage and retrieval systems: a new colored two-dimensional barcode technology and a novel visual cryptography scheme. Two-dimensional barcodes have been a topic of research for several decades, but there is still no standard that stores and retrieves high amounts of data. Recently, new requirements have been imposed on applications that use 2D barcodes as a communication channel, such as the capability of storing information into a small printed area. This particular requirement is specially important for 2D barcodes that store cryptographic primitives to be processed off-line. This is the case of barcodes in products like cigarettes and medicines, which are used for data validation and product verification. The proposed 2D colored barcode is called High Density Two-Dimensional Code (HD2DC) and is currently one of the 2D barcodes with the highest data density. HD2DC can be generated in 8 different sizes, with 5 or 8 colors. To increase robustness, the system uses a Reed-Solomon error correction algorithm with 3 different levels: Low, Medium and High, which provide approximately 10%, 20% and 30% error correction, respectively. Visual cryptography (VC) is a technique that encodes the content of a secret image into two or more images, which are called shares. These shares are printed on transparencies and superimposed (requiring a good alignment) to reveal (visually) the original secret image, i.e. without requiring any computation. Current visual cryptography schemes use at least 2 shares (transparencies) as keys. With respect to the secret image size, most of these schemes produce a n x n (n ≥ 2) size expansion of the shares and the decoded image. The proposed Visual Cryptography scheme, on the other hand, uses two shares and does not require a size expansion. The first share is a colored film printed on a Polyvinyl Chloride (PVC) surface of 3 millimeters, while the second share is a colored image displayed on a smartphone or tablet. In this work, we performed a physical evaluation of the color interference properties of these two shares (the printed PVC transparency and the image displayed on the mobile device) to find the most adequate color space to be used in the proposed cryptosystem. We also propose a strong validation system combining our Xor-Based Visual Cryptography scheme with HD2DC. HD2DC has the capability of storing the share that is shown on the mobile device display. This encoding architecture enhances security perception and explores the mobile device usability, using its screen to display a Visual Cryptography share

Digital Image Segmentation and On–line Print Quality Diagnostics

During the electrophotographic (EP) process for a modern laser printer, object-oriented halftoning is sometimes used which renders an input raster page with different halftone screen frequencies according to an object map; this approach can reduce the print artifacts for the smooth areas as well as preserve the fine details of a page. Object map can be directly extracted from the page description language (PDL), but most of the time, it is not correctly generated. For the first part of this thesis, we introduce a new object generation algorithm that generates an object map from scratch purely based on a raster image. The algorithm is intended for ASIC application. To achieve hardware friendliness and memory efficiency, the algorithm only buffers two strips of an image at a time for processing. A novel two-pass connected component algorithm is designed that runs through all the pixels in raster order, collect features and classify components on the fly, and recycle unused components to save memories for future strips. The algorithm is finally implemented as a C program. For 10 test pages, with the similar quality of object maps generated, the number of connected components used can be reduced by over 97% on average compared to the classic two-pass connected component which buffers a whole page of pixels. The novelty of the connected component algorithm used here for document segmentation can also be potentially used for wide variety of other applications. The second part of the thesis proposes a new way to diagnose print quality. Compared to the traditional diagnostics of print quality which prints a specially designed test page to be examined by an expert or against a user manual, our proposed system could automatically diagnose a customer’s printer without any human interference. The system relies on scanning printouts from user’s printer. Print defects such as banding, streaking, etc. will be reflected on its scanned page and can be captured by comparing to its master image; the master image is the digitally generated original from which the page is printed. Once the print quality drops below a specified acceptance criteria level, the system can notify a user of the presence of print quality issues. Among so many print defects, color fading – caused by the low toner in the cartridge – is the focus of this work. Our image processing pipeline first uses a feature based image registration algorithm to align the scanned page with the master page spatially and then calculates the color difference of different color clusters between the scanned page and the master page. At last, it will predict which cartridge is depleted

Automated color correction for colorimetric applications using barcodes

[eng] Color-based sensor devices often offer qualitative solutions, where a material change its color from one color to another, and this is change is observed by a user who performs a manual reading. These materials change their color in response to changes in a certain physical or chemical magnitude. Nowadays, we can find colorimetric indicators with several sensing targets, such as: temperature, humidity, environmental gases, etc. The common approach to quantize these sensors is to place ad hoc electronic components, e.g., a reader device. With the rise of smartphone technology, the possibility to automatically acquire a digital image of those sensors and then compute a quantitative measure is near. By leveraging this measuring process to the smartphones, we avoid the use of ad hoc electronic components, thus reducing colorimetric application cost. However, there exists a challenge on how-to acquire the images of the colorimetric applications and how-to do it consistently, with the disparity of external factors affecting the measure, such as ambient light conditions or different camera modules. In this thesis, we tackle the challenges to digitize and quantize colorimetric applications, such as colorimetric indicators. We make a statement to use 2D barcodes, well-known computer vision patterns, as the base technology to overcome those challenges. We focus on four main challenges: (I) to capture barcodes on top of real-world challenging surfaces (bottles, food packages, etc.), which are the usual surface where colorimetric indicators are placed; (II) to define a new 2D barcode to embed colorimetric features in a back-compatible fashion; (III) to achieve image consistency when capturing images with smartphones by reviewing existent methods and proposing a new color correction method, based upon thin-plate splines mappings; and (IV) to demonstrate a specific application use case applied to a colorimetric indicator for sensing CO2 in the range of modified atmosphere packaging, MAP, one of the common food-packaging standards.[cat] Els dispositius de sensat basats en color, normalment ofereixen solucions qualitatives, en aquestes solucions un material canvia el seu color a un altre color, i aquest canvi de color és observat per un usuari que fa una mesura manual. Aquests materials canvien de color en resposta a un canvi en una magnitud física o química. Avui en dia, podem trobar indicadors colorimètrics que amb diferents objectius, per exemple: temperatura, humitat, gasos ambientals, etc. L'opció més comuna per quantitzar aquests sensors és l'ús d'electrònica addicional, és a dir, un lector. Amb l'augment de la tecnologia dels telèfons intel·ligents, la possibilitat d'automatitzar l'adquisició d'imatges digitals d'aquests sensors i després computar una mesura quantitativa és a prop. Desplaçant aquest procés de mesura als telèfons mòbils, evitem l'ús d'aquesta electrònica addicional, i així, es redueix el cost de l'aplicació colorimètrica. Tanmateix, existeixen reptes sobre com adquirir les imatges de les aplicacions colorimètriques i de com fer-ho de forma consistent, a causa de la disparitat de factors externs que afecten la mesura, com per exemple la llum ambient or les diferents càmeres utilitzades. En aquesta tesi, encarem els reptes de digitalitzar i quantitzar aplicacions colorimètriques, com els indicadors colorimètrics. Fem una proposició per utilitzar codis de barres en dues dimensions, que són coneguts patrons de visió per computador, com a base de la nostra tecnologia per superar aquests reptes. Ens focalitzem en quatre reptes principals: (I) capturar codis de barres sobre de superfícies del món real (ampolles, safates de menjar, etc.), que són les superfícies on usualment aquests indicadors colorimètrics estan situats; (II) definir un nou codi de barres en dues dimensions per encastar elements colorimètrics de forma retro-compatible; (III) aconseguir consistència en la captura d'imatges quan es capturen amb telèfons mòbils, revisant mètodes de correcció de color existents i proposant un nou mètode basat en transformacions geomètriques que utilitzen splines; i (IV) demostrar l'ús de la tecnologia en un cas específic aplicat a un indicador colorimètric per detectar CO2 en el rang per envasos amb atmosfera modificada, MAP, un dels estàndards en envasos de menjar.