Image Embedding in QR Code

Quick Response (QR) code is a two dimensional barcode widely used in many applications such as manufacturing, advertising, retailing etc. QR code looks like a noisy structure. The appearance of QR code can be improved by embedding an image into the code. This work proposed a method where the appearance of QR code is composed of visually meaningful patterns selected by users. This work makes QR code from machine read only to a personalized form with human visual pleasing appearance. The image embedding in the QR code is not an easy task because embedded result should be decodable by standard decoding applications and can be applied to any color image with full area coverage. In this work QR code pixels are selected by genetic algorithm, then the selected pixels are encoded with the luminance values of the image.