Eli and Peyton Manning autograph verifications
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Is this jersey actually signed by Wayne Gretzky?
Description of item to authenticate
The item under examination is a Wilson Duke Pro Football, adorned with two distinct autographs. Both are inscribed with a pronounced silver marker, creating a noticeable contrast against the leather texture of the football.
On the right side of the football, there's an autograph bearing a likeness to signatures associated with Eli Manning. Below this signature, an inscription reads "SB XLII MVP", possibly referencing Super Bowl XLII's Most Valuable Player accolade from 2008. Further, the numeral "10" is positioned adjacent to the signature, suggesting a connection to a particular jersey number within the NFL.
Conversely, on the left side, there's another signature that aligns closely with those of Peyton Manning. Alongside this signature, an inscription "SB XLI MVP" can be found, which might be highlighting an award from Super Bowl XLI in 2007. Positioned to the immediate right of the signature is the numeral "18", potentially alluding to another significant jersey number in the NFL.
Central to these two signatures is the dedication: "To T." From the information we've gathered, "T" appears to be an equipment individual associated with the Colts. The football was purportedly given as a token of appreciation for services rendered during player transfers and logistics.
Preliminary provenance suggests that these autographs might have been obtained simultaneously during the Pro Bowl event in 2011.
GETTING READY
Processing the signatures
We converted the photos of signatures into squared B/W images, to use as input for our neural network, which works with sub-images of 256x256 pixels. 70% of the authentic signatures were separated for training, 10% for validation, and the remaining 20% were reserved for testing. We placed in a different folder the unknown signatures the customer provided us with.
Peyton Manning
- Prominent loops and smaller garlands or arcades.
- The 'P' in Peyton is constructed in two strokes: one for the vertical line and another for the arc, initiated from the top and occasionally appearing as a wedge.
- The subsequent letters in Peyton's name are penned fluidly in one continuous motion, with either nonexistent or extremely brief threads.
- A distinctive, nearly vertical, fluid linkage between the base of the 'y' extending to the pinnacle of the 't'...
EliManning
- While structurally similar, discernible deviations exist, with a pronounced inclination for arcades over garlands.
- The pervasive presence of loops.
- An ascending baseline.
- The 'E' seamlessly integrates with the subsequent letters, scripted in an individual continuous movement, showcasing a loop and an arcade.
- The 'M' embarks from the apex, descends to the nadir, and progresses with a sinuous contour. ... continue reading by clicking the blue box:
Training our neural network
Our neural networks are trained on the images of our verified authentic signatures
The number of available authentic signatures is finite, so we perform data augmentation: This means randomly translating and rotating the shape of the signature in the squared images. This improves the accuracy of the classification. Additionally, it is also zoomed in and out a bit.
- We trained our model using the authentic samples and skilled forgeries. For this task, we used two networks, an encoder and a decoder, which is able to reconstruct the signatures. After obtaining training convergence, we saved the trained model.
OUR VERDICT
Using our trained model to test the signatures
During testing we compute a probability of the signatures to be authentic.
- Technically, this is the similarity of the feature maps obtained with each test signature compared to the ones extracted during training with the authentic ones.
For testing, we used 50 fake and 50 authentic signatures, which were not seen by the model during training. As a result, of these, 99% of the signatures have been correctly classified.
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