Channel Coding Optimization for Visually Pleasant QR Codes : Invited Presentation

Quick Response (QR) codes are widely used in publicity campaigns to connect offline and online content. However, the black and white QR codes structure represents a constraint for their integration into publicity campaigns. In this paper, an algorithm to generate visually enhanced QR codes is proposed. The algorithm aims at blending the black and white QR code with a color image. Taking advantage of the error correction codes used in the standard QR code encoding, the original binary QR code is modified without affecting the decoding rate. Gauss-Jordan elimination is utilized to generate this new binary QR code whose structure is more similar to the color image. Finally, the luminance of the blended image is optimized to minimize a metric of visual quality subject to a constraint in the maximum probability of decoding error.