The ODS Conference held in San Francisco (20-22 January, 2010) was attended by a record number of delegates and provided an important update into advances in the use of holography for security purposes, while also giving similar updates on competitive technologies. Often, the non-holographic technologies are seen as complementing the holographic. This is evidenced by the fact that a major holographic foil supplier such as Kurz presented the development work it carried out using photopolymer in addition to Kinegram® DynaMic stripe, a lenticular material also intended for banknotes.

To the casual observer, it seemed that the growing success of Motion®, the microlenticular technology now being offered by Crane as an overt security element for currency notes, has provoked a flurry of activity from leading holographic foil suppliers such as Kurz’s subsidiary OVD Kinegram and Louisenthal.

In this and future issues of Holography News we review some of the products and techniques presented at this conference; suffice it to mention here that the conference organizing committee led by its chairman, Ruud van Renesse, did a wonderful job in demonstrating how holographic technology is now experiencing a serious challenge to its pre-eminent position as a visual security feature and yet, the companies heavily invested in it are combining it with microlenticulars rather than replacing it.

Both Kurz and Dai Nippon Printing showed that the hitherto under-explored world of volume holograms is showing promise as a next generation security feature. Cost has been the strongest inhibiting factor but as important clients (such as the Swiss National Bank) demand greater novelty and security from their overt features, suppliers are able to display greater technical and aesthetic creativity with less constraint on price.

We learned that the Bank of Canada has invested considerable time and effort attempting to understand what features attract and hold the attention of inspectors and the public thereby justifying their use on security documents. Significantly, holograms still score highest (70%+) with colour-changing inks only claiming 3%. The picture is complicated by considerations such as the training required to validate the features, the mental retention of the training and, of course, cost, but there seems to be something about depth and movement that appeals to and is retained in memory by the public.

This consideration caused 3M to expand the visual attributes of its floating image material to include color and greater depth. The announcement at this conference revealed a new technology able to combine the covert aspect of Confirm™, 3M’s core retroreflective security material, with red and blue elements which could be seen above and below the plane of the material.

Finally, Sagem Identification BV, presented the 3D imaging system they have developed for ID cards. The result is a 3D portrait in black and white engraved into a PC card. Many have dreamed that this would be a hologram but the Sagem system combines four views of the subject into a lenticular stereogram. As with holography, the practical challenge comes at the data capture stage and in Sagem’s case, the need for special cameras to shoot the four images of the subject limits wider deployment of the system. But what was abundantly clear was that the goal of deep, easily viewed images, preferably with movement and color, remains as attractive as ever.