Forensic verification utilizing forensic markings inside halftones

1. A non-transitory computer readable medium comprising computer executable instructions that when executed cause at least one processor to:

extract an interior of a halftone of an image of printed media, wherein at least a portion of the interior of the halftone is encoded with a print signature;

access a reference signature stored in a registry, wherein the reference signature includes encoded payload information, wherein the halftone is encoded with a payload to form a mapping between the print signature and the payload information; and

verify that the printed media is authentic based on a comparison of the print signature and the payload information.

2. The non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 1 , and further comprising computer executable instructions that when executed cause the at least one processor to:

employ the payload information to index the print signature.

3. The non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 1 , and further comprising computer executable instructions that when executed cause the at least one processor to:

encode the halftone with the payload information to forma stegatone.

4. The non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 3 , wherein the halftone is encoded with a unique payload to form a one-to-one mapping between the print signature and the payload information.

5. The non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 3 , wherein the halftone is encoded with a common payload to form a many-to-one mapping between the print signature and the payload information.

6. The non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 1 , and further comprising computer executable instructions that when executed cause the at least one processor to:

preprocess the halftone via a bandpass filter to mitigate low and high frequencies within a captured image.

7. The non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 1 , and further comprising computer executable instructions that when executed cause the at least one processor to:

preprocess the halftone via a difference analyzer that subtracts an image from n aligned captured hardcopy to produce a difference signal image.

8. The non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 1 , and further comprising computer executable instructions that when executed cause the at least one processor to:

process the halftone via a subdivide area processor that uses an equi-spaced grid to segment the halftone into smaller processing portions.

9. The non transitory computer readable medium of claim 8 , and further comprising computer executable instructions that when executed cause the at least one processor to:

process the halftone according to concentric regions of an image.

10. The non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 8 , and further comprising computer executable instructions that when executed cause the at least one processor to:

produce a print signature with an area code generator based on output from the subdivide area processor.

11. The non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 10 , and further comprising computer executable instructions that when executed cause the at least one processor to:

determine a normalized variance for each processing portion generated by the subdivide area processor.

12. A method, comprising:

recovering a print signature from an interior of a halftone of a captured, image of printed media, wherein the halftone is encoded with the print signature;

comparing the print signature to payload information encoded in a reference signature stored in a registry, wherein the halftone is encoded with a payload to form a mapping between the print signature and the payload information; and

verifying that the printed media is authentic based on the comparison.

13. The method of claim 12 , and further comprising:

performing bandpass filtering or digital subtraction on a stegatone formed by encoding the halftone with the payload information; and

subdividing the stegatone.

14. The method of claim 12 , and further comprising:

indexing the print signature using the payload information.

15. A system comprising:

a memory for storing computer executable instructions; and

a processing unit for accessing the memory and executing the computer executable instructions, the computer executable instructions comprising:

a preprocessor to generate a filtered signal or a difference signal from a captured image of printed media;

a subdivide area processor to segment the filtered signal or the difference signal in preparation of further image processing of the captured image of printed media;

an area code generator to process segmented output from the subdivide area processor and to recover a print signature from an interior of a halftone that is encoded with payload information; and

a verification system to authenticate the printed media by comparing the recovered print signature with a reference signature stored in a print signature registry, wherein the reference signature includes payload information that is used to index the print signature, wherein the halftone is encoded with one of a unique payload to form a one-to-one mapping between the print signature and the payload information or a common payload to form a many-to-one mapping between the print signature and the payload information.

16. The method of claim 12 , wherein the halftone is encoded with a unique payload to form a one-to-one mapping between the print signature and the payload information.

17. The method of claim 12 , wherein the halftone is encoded with a common payload to form a many-to-one mapping between the print signature and the payload information.