Concealed moire pattern encoded security holograms readable by a key hologram

This paper describes a novel method of incorporating concealed coding features in security holograms in the form of moire patterns, which need an encoded key hologram to decode them. These concealed codes in the holograms are in turn recorded with an encoded feature, so that these remain invisible to the counterfeiters thereby enhancing the anti-counterfeiting ability of security holograms. These security features, which are specific kinds of moire patterns, can only be decoded by using an encoded key hologram in the final reading process. Though these type of security holograms are quite suitable for visual inspection, they possess high degree of anti-counterfeit ability and also do not require expensive reading machines. They can also be used as security codes for better protection against counterfeiting embossed holograms. Two different recording schemes for the formation of such security holograms and typical experimental results have been presented. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.