Semi-supervised image manipulation localization with residual enhancement

Abstract

Images have become a significant medium for information transmission, while image forensics has garnered widespread attention from researchers. Due to the scarcity of finely annotated images in the field of image manipulation detection and localization, existing methods for locating manipulated images can only utilize a limited amount of data for model training. However, deep learning models typically require a large number of finely annotated images to fully leverage their powerful fitting capabilities. In this paper, we propose a semi-supervised image manipulation localization framework, employing semi-supervised learning to use unannotated images for deep learning model training. To achieve this goal, we first design a residual enhancement module that contains an encoding-decoding structure. The regression target of this branch is the pristine regions in the images to generate the reconstructed images. Next, we perform a residual operation between the reconstructed and original images to roughly locate the anomalous regions and refine the features extracted by the encoder. Secondly, we employ weakly-supervised learning by adding an image-level classification head to the final layer of the encoder. The classification head generates a class active map based on image-level classification results, which further guides the model’s feature augmentation. Finally, we formulate a specialized semi-supervised framework tailored for image manipulation detection, enabling the utilization of a large volume of unannotated data for model training. Extensive experimental results highlight the notable efficacy of the proposed approach, and outperforms state-of-the-art approaches.