"The objective of the SIGNED project is to develop a Paper Based Document authentication system, making use of innovative Image Hashing Techniques, to be integrated into a flexible IT tool usable in a stand alone way or integrated with organisations’ systems. The innovative SIGNED system authentication and its IT solution, which doesn’t have similar competitor on the market, will face the need of a trustable information exchange through paper medium, permitting to avoid fraud and deception. The project results will in fact enable SMEs, Public Administration, Banks, Insurance Companies and citizens to verify the authenticity of sensible paper based documents, such as financial information, personal identity information, etc The SIGNED IT solution will extend to paper based documents the same degree of trust in authentication, and the same security level, as the established Digital Signature (DSAS) technique: - Authenticity. The receiver of the document is always able to authenticate the signer - Integrity. The receiver of the document is always able to determine if any change in the document, introduced after the document has been signed, occurred. - Non-repudiation. The signer cannot deny the production of the signed document To obtain an authentication scheme that can comply with the above described functions, the project will achieve the following main scientific and technological targets: • Analyse the changes that are introduced in the analogical-digital conversion process, and define a model of acceptable information data noise in the passage between paper to digital documents • Find a proper representation of the images of paper documents able to drop accidental changes (introduced during the analogical-digital conversion process) and exposing semantic changes (meaningful to the reader) • The development of a new hashing algorithm less sensible to noise, able to detect any meaningful changes (semantic changes) from accidental ones"