A Complementary Approach for Securing and Anti-Counterfeiting of Valuable Documents Based on Encryption of Computer-Generated Hologram

Sensors (Basel). 2025 Apr 10;25(8):2410. doi: 10.3390/s25082410.

Abstract

We present a novel approach for securing valuable documents using a complementary approach based on the encryption of computer-generated holograms (CGHs). The proposed approach utilizes the well-known iterative Fourier transform algorithm (IFTA) to generate a phase-only CGH for valuable digital and/or physical documents. The generated CGH is then secured by binary phase randomization, which is implemented using the symmetric encryption technique, exclusive OR (XOR). The reconstruction process for the calculated secured CGHs varied slightly depending on whether the documents were digital or physical. For digital documents, reconstruction was performed using a symmetric decryption key followed by an inverse Fourier transform (IFFT). On the other hand, the reconstruction of the physical document involved two additional processes: printing and scanning. To evaluate the quality of the digital reconstruction, the speckle signal-to-noise ratio (SSNR) was estimated for both printed grayscale and binary CGHs. The security analysis of the XOR-encrypted CGH was quantitatively evaluated to ensure the level of protection against various cryptographic attacks such as plaintext and brute-force attacks. The results revealed that the combination of phase CGHs and the XOR encryption/decryption provides robust cryptographic protection for valuable documents, benefiting document security and anti-counterfeiting.

Keywords: anti-counterfeiting; computer-generated holograms; document security.