Enhanced sub-surface document inspection using optical coherence tomography
This project is suitable for a 1-year MSc in Physics. The project does not currently have funding attached, students must be able to fund the fees and their living costs either through their own funds or a scholarship. Current information on fees is available here.
Supervisors: Adrian Podoleanu, Manuel Marques
Collaborators: Robert Green, Roberto King.
OCT is a high resolution, non invasive, optical imaging technology that is expanding from medical imaging application to other areas, such as forensic sciences and document inspection.
The identification of individuals, particularly at international border crossings, coupled with the evolving sophistication of identity documents are issues that authorities must contend with. Particularly, the ability to distinguish legitimate from counterfeit documents, with high throughput, sensitivity, and selectivity is an ever-evolving challenge.
Over the last decade, an increasing number of security features have been introduced by authorities in identification documents. The latest generation of travel documents (such as passports and national ID cards) forego paper substrates for several layers of polycarbonate, allowing security features to be embedded within the documents. These security features may contain information at either the superficial and sub-surface levels, thus increasing the document’s resilience to counterfeiting.
As the documents become harder to forge, so does the sophistication of forgery detection. There appears to be an unmet and evolving need to identify such sophisticated forgeries, in a non-destructive, high throughput manner.
In this project, the successful candidate would apply optical coherence tomography imaging to identify and assess security features in specimen passports/national ID cards. Since OCT allows sub-surface imaging of translucent structures, it enables non-destructive quantitative visualisation of embedded security features.
This project is by its very definition a multi-disciplinary one: the successful candidate would be jointly supervised by colleagues from Applied Optics, Forensic Sciences, and representatives from industry.
There is no deadline for the project – applicants will be assessed on a rolling basis – although please note any separate deadlines for scholarships or funding. For further information or informal enquiries, please contact Professor Adrian Podoleanu (A.G.H.Podoleanu@kent.ac.uk).
More Information
MSc/PhD Study in the Applied Optics Group