Sequence discrimination of heterogeneous crossing of seal impression and ink-printed text using adhesive tapes

Abstract This paper presents a technique to discriminate the sequence of stamped seal impression and ink-printed text in a document to detect falsely signed documents. In many Asian countries where a seal is widely used to endorse documents, a possibly forged document involves a seal impressed before the text is printed. The proposed method uses adhesive tapes with peel adhesion strength of approximately 25 oz/in. to exfoliate the top layer of the overlapping region of seal impression and ink-printed text in the document. A pair of digital images of the overlapping region, captured using an infinite focus microscope, is compared for color changes before and after the exfoliation with adhesive tapes. The proposed sequence discrimination index (SDI) measures the amount of color changes before and after the exfoliation to determine the sequence of seal impression and printed text. Experiment results show that the SDI successfully discriminates the sequence of seal impression and printed text for different types of ink cartridges and seal inkpads under various storage conditions, enabling forensic investigation of falsely signed documents with a seal.