Biometric-Like Infrastructure for Artwork Authentication

When we buy an artwork object, the seller issues a certificate of authenticity, which contains specific details about the artwork itself. Unscrupulous sellers can duplicate the certificates of authenticity, and then use them to "authenticate" non-genuine art objects. A solution to this problem could be to insert a system capable of linking the certificate with a specific work of art. To do this it is necessary, for every single object, to find unique, unrepeatable, and unchangeable characteristics. In this paper we proposed a method which, starting from the well-known advantages given by the biometry paradigm in human authentication, tries to use similar approach to artworks, by means of the identification of random intrinsic characteristics, which can be used for univocally identifying the object. Starting from the consideration that nowadays mobile phones include high quality photo cameras, access to wireless networks, GPS assistance, RFID reader and other innovative systems, the proposed Biometric-Like infrastructure for artwork authentication is based on smartphone architecture in conjunction with an internet-based authentication archive.