Toward an interactive poster using digital watermarking and a mobile phone camera

A method for embedding a watermark in print media, posters or other paper printouts and reading the watermark information blindly with a camera phone is proposed. A subtractive-additive embedding method is applied in which the message is coded with a directed periodic pattern. The message is detected and read by searching regularities in the autocorrelation function of a periodic signal. The robustness to disturbance occurring during printing process due to air interface and camera phone properties is ensured using noise reduction, modified JND model, enhanced peak detection with filtering and shaping and two-level coding of the message. The validity of the approach is proven with tests, and an application example of an interactive poster is examined.