Success through reliable technology

Laser Surface Authentication (LSA™) – the technology at the core of ProteXXion®

Laser Surface Authentication (LSA™) was developed by a group of scientists at Imperial College in London headed by Russell Cowburn, Professor of Nanotechnology. Ingenia Technologies Ltd. – the company they founded in 2003, has also developed and patented suitable laser scanners and computer software. LSA™ can record the unique fingerprints of surfaces and recognize them again with a degree of certainty that is unparalleled. The natural surface structure of the object forms the basis for this fingerprint.

The surface structure is recorded with the aid of a special laser-optical scanning process. In this process the direct and diffuse scattering of light from the surface is measured relative to the incident beam at different angles. The recorded signal contains highly significant information on the identity of the scanned object and is therefore practically unique.

The signal data are compressed using special algorithms and stored. This storage requires just 125 – 750 bytes per scan – depending on the level of redundancy required, and thus the required tolerance of natural surface changes or damage to the surface. A total of 600 million scans can therefore be stored on a 300 GB hard disk, now commonplace. Calculations have shown that this process would enable reliable identifi cation of a single sheet of paper amongst 10⁷² other sheets. Assuming that one sheet weighs fi ve grams then these 10⁷² sheets would have a mass that is approximately 10¹⁶ times greater than the estimated mass of the entire universe. Identifi cation is provided by correlation – digital cross-correlation between two scans from different objects yields only noise whereas a cross-correlation between two scans of the same object yields a clear signal.

If the surfaces are less structured, for instance matt-fi nish plastic surfaces or lacquered carton, then the recognition value falls to one sheet amongst approximately 10²⁰ sheets. This is still equivalent to the ratio of one bucket of water (10 liters) to all the water on the planet (1.4 x 10²¹ liters).