Image Authentication Technique Research Articles

A reversible fragile watermarking technique using fourier transform and Fibonacci Q-matrix for medical image authentication

Image authentication techniques are crucial for a multitude of multimedia applications. When images are transmitted through non-secure channels like the internet, they are vulnerable to unauthorized alterations and manipulations. Therefore, it is essential in sensitive fields, like the medical industry, to employ image authentication techniques to guarantee the integrity and authenticity of transmitted images. In this paper, to address these security issues and to ensure the authenticity of medical images, we present a reversible fragile watermarking model where the watermark is first generated from the cover image using DCT and then encrypted by the Fibonacci Q-matrix technique, enhancing the model’s security. Subsequently, DFT is performed on the host image and the obtained sub-band is segmented into 2 × 2 blocks, the watermark is then embedded within the frequency coefficients using a new embedding technique. Experimental results indicates that the presented model produces a great watermarked image quality, with a PSNR superior to 117 dB, while maintaining an acceptable embedding capacity of 0.25 BPP and high sensitivity to various attacks, as it was tested against 16 different attacks and could detect tampering in all of them. Furthermore, the presented scheme offers nearly perfect reversibility with a PSNR of 324 dB, which is very useful in the medical field where we need images with as little distortion as possible.

A secure image authentication technique based on sparse approximation and quantum mechanism

The security and protection of digital content transmitted over a network are critical concerns due to the ease with which various types of data can be transformed into text, images, audio, and video forms. This vulnerability makes them susceptible to unauthorized modifications by hackers. To address this issue, several techniques have been developed, and one such approach is image encryption and watermarking. Watermarking offers solutions for data authentication, copyright protection, and document ownership problems. This paper introduces a new algorithm based on Sparse Approximation (SA), Quantum Encryption (QE), and a measurement matrix to achieve watermark encryption, as well as its secure transmission by embedding it in a host image.In this, the watermark image is divided into four sub-images, and then sparsification is performed in the transform domain. To further enhance security, the sparse data is transformed in the Discrete Wavelet Transformation (DWT) domain, and a sparse coefficient exchange procedure is applied. Next, we generate a measurement matrix, and the row and column vector of this matrix are filled by sequences which are generated by a quantum logistic map, and then perform encryption as well as data scrambled process. During encryption, updated pixel location is calculated based on a sparse sub-band coefficient exchange procedure. Based on this procedure, we exchange the sparse coefficient between the sub-images. Finally, we generate an encrypted watermark through a series of inverse sparsification, DWT, and sampling. These steps collectively fortify the algorithms against various attacks, making them robust.The encrypted watermark information is used for authentication purposes and is embedded into the host image using DWT and Singular Value Decomposition. The results are presented in various tabular and graphical forms, showcasing the effectiveness of the proposed method. The experimental results show that the proposed techniques resist several attacks such as enhancement attacks, noise impact attacks, and geometrical attacks. A comparative analysis is also provided, comparing the results with existing approaches.

Block mapping and dual-matrix-based watermarking for image authentication with self-recovery capability.

Numerous image authentication techniques have been devised to address the potential security issue of malicious tampering with image content since digital images can be easily duplicated, modified, transformed and diffused via the Internet transmission. However, the existing works still remain many shortcomings in terms of the recovery incapability and detection accuracy with extensive tampering. To improve the performance of tamper detection and image recovery, we present a block mapping and dual-matrix-based watermarking scheme for image authentication with self-recovery capability in this paper. The to-be-embedded watermark information is composed of the authentication data and recovery data. The Authentication Feature Composition Calculation algorithm is proposed to generate the authentication data for image tamper detection and localization. Furthermore, the recovery data for tampered region recovery is comprised of self-recovery bits and mapped-recovery bits. The Set Partition in Hierarchical Trees encoding algorithm is applied to obtain the self-recovery bits, whereas the Rehashing Model-based Block Mapping algorithm is proposed to obtain the mapped-recovery bits for retrieving the damaged codes caused by tampering. Subsequently, the watermark information is embedded into the original image as digital watermarking with the guidance of a dual-matrix. The experimental results demonstrate that comparing with other state-of-the-art works, our proposed scheme not only improves the performance in recovery, but also extends the limitation of tampering rate up to 90%. Furthermore, it obtains a desirable image quality above 40 dB, large watermark payload up to 3.169 bpp, and the effective resistance to malicious attack, such as copy-move and collage attacks.

AuSR3: A new block mapping technique for image authentication and self-recovery to avoid the tamper coincidence problem

This paper proposes a new block mapping technique for image authentication and self-recovery designed to avoid the tamper coincidence problem called the AuSR3. The tamper coincidence problem can arise when modifications to an image affect the original block and its recovery data, resulting in the inability to recover the tampered region of the image. The new block mapping technique ensures that the recovery data of a block is embedded into the most distant location possible, minimizing the tamper coincidence problem. In addition, the improved LSB shifting algorithm is employed to embed the watermark data consisting of authentication and recovery data. The experimental result shows that the AuSR3 can produce high-quality watermarked images across various datasets with average PSNR values of 46.2 dB, which improved by 2.1 dB compared to the LSB replacement technique. The new block mapping technique avoids the tamper coincidence problem by up to 25% tampering rates. It contributes to the high-quality recovered image with a PSNR and SSIM value of 39.10 dB and 0.9944, respectively, on a 10% tampering rate on the USC-SIPI dataset.

Image Authentication and Restoration Using Block-Wise Variational Automatic Encoding and Generative Adversarial Networks

The Internet is a conduit for vast quantities of digital data, with the transmission of images being especially prevalent due to the widespread use of social media. However, this popularity has led to an increase in security concerns such as image tampering and forgery. As a result, image authentication has become a critical technology that cannot be overlooked. Recently, numerous researchers have focused on developing image authentication techniques using deep learning to combat various image tampering attacks. Nevertheless, image authentication techniques based on deep learning typically classify only specific types of tampering attacks and are unable to accurately detect tampered images or indicate the precise location of tampered areas. The paper introduces a novel image authentication framework that utilizes block-wise encoding through Variational Autoencoder and Generative Adversarial Network models. Additionally, the framework includes a classification mechanism to develop separate authentication models for different images. In the training phase, the image is first divided into blocks of the same size as training data. The goal is to enable the model to judge the authenticity of the image by blocks and to generate blocks similar to the original image blocks. In the verification phase, the input image can detect the authenticity of the image through the trained model, locate the exact position of the image tampering, and reconstruct the image to ensure the ownership.

A Robust watermarking technique for biometric image authentication

A Robust watermarking technique for biometric image authentication

A robust watermarking technique for biometric image authentication

A robust watermarking technique for biometric image authentication

Multiuser optical image authentication platform based on sparse constraint and polar decomposition in Fresnel domain

In this paper, a new multiuser optical image encryption and authentication technique is proposed. Sparse multiplexing and polar decomposition are used in the Fresnel domain to obtain the ciphertext of an input image. To enable the multiuser platform, multiple private keys are obtained through polar decomposition during the encryption process. It will allow multiple authorized users to access the secure information simultaneously without having a key distribution problem among them. The proposed method has a large key space and is robust against several attacks, such as contamination attacks (noise and occlusion), brute force attack, plaintext attacks, and special iterative attack. A comparative analysis of the presented technique is also performed with the similar existing techniques. The numerical simulation results demonstrate the robustness and feasibility of the proposed algorithm.

A review of hashing based image authentication techniques

A review of hashing based image authentication techniques

Image Authentication Based on Watermarking Approach: Review

Digital image authentication techniques have recently gained a lot of attention due to their importance to a large number of military and medical applications, banks, and institutions, which require a high level of security. Generally, digital images are transmitted over insecure media, such as the Internet and computer networks of various kinds. The Internet has become one of the basic pillars of life and a solution to many of the problems left by the coronavirus. As a result, images must be protected from attempts to alter their content that might affect important decision-making. An image authentication (IA) system is a solution to this difficult problem. In the previous literature, several methods have been proposed to protect the authenticity of an image. Digital image watermark is a strategy to ensure the reliability, resilience, intellectual property, and validity of multimedia documents. Digital media, such as images, audio, and video, can hide content. Watermarking of a digital image is a mechanism by which the watermark is embedded in multimedia and the image of the watermark is retrieved or identified in a multimedia entity. This paper reviews IA techniques, watermark embedding techniques, tamper detection methods and discusses the performance of the techniques, the pros and cons of each technique, and the proposed methods for improving the performance of watermark techniques.

Review of medical image authentication techniques and their recent trends

There is always a need for an updated systematic review of a special subject area because of its importance for the researchers and the interested audience. This paper presents a review of medical image authentication (MIA) which is an interesting application of medical image watermarking techniques. The main objectives of medical image authentication techniques are protecting the medical images from tampering and verifying their integrity. Over the years many MIA schemes have been presented for different purposes such as detecting tampering in the medical images, localizing the tampered region, and recovering the tampered region. This paper starts by providing some basic information about the medical image watermarking techniques and their requirements, followed by a brief display for the previous review papers in this field which proves the necessity to present this review paper. Then, an overview of MIA process and its domain-based concepts are presented. Thereafter, the MIA schemes are classified according to their objectives and the domain of embedding the watermarks. The most used performance evaluation measures and metrics in the state-of-the-art are also reviewed in this paper followed by the conclusions and some recent trends of this interesting research field.

A Color Image Authentication Scheme With Grayscale Invariance

Color image authentication is a method that allows the detection of tampered regions on images. Existing related works evaluated their performance based on visual quality and detection capability of the marked image, but the issue of grayscale invariance was ignored. However, many applications in image processing required the color image to first convert into a grayscale image before any further post-processing such as edge detection, color masking in Photoshop, and the display of e-ink. If the resulting image and the original image are different in their grayscale value, they might produce different outcomes after the post-processing. Therefore, how to maintain unchanged of the grayscale value has become an important issue. This paper presents a grayscale-invariance color image authentication technique. We proposed to embed the authentication code into two of three primary color channels and adjust the remaining one to remedy the distortion of grayscale value. The experimental results showed that, when embedding each four-bit authentication code into two color channels, the visual quality of the marked images has achieved an average 33.26 dB of peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) while providing a satisfactory detectability.

WITHDRAWN: An invisible based watermarking technique for biometric image authentication

Biometric image authentication is an important and challenging area of research. It involves an analysis of the candidate’s biometrics for security purposes. Exposure to such sensitive information can be a threat to an individual’s identity and system security. In this paper, we have proposed an invisible watermarking scheme to protect biometric information from harmful attacks. Initially, the technique segments the host image into blocks using edge entropy and then selects the appropriate band coefficients using 2D-DWT transformation. The adaptive histogram technique is used to embed the watermarking image properly. Finally, to retrieve the original watermark, a reversible data hiding approach (RDH) and visual cryptography technique (VC) is used that provides safety and security to biometric images. The proposed method was tested on two datasets, namely, CASIA-v5 and UBIRIS-v1 and is evaluated on various measuring metrics such as PSNR, NC, and BER. Further, the proposed technique is analyzed and compared with different traditionally implemented watermarking techniques based on PSNR and NC values. Results show that the presented method outperforms the other methods by achieving best in class results and highest PSNR (62.52, 61.25) and NC values (0.95, 0.94).

A self-embedding fragile image authentication based on singular value decomposition

Nowadays, image authentication techniques are widely applied to digital multimedia to address their fraudulent and illegal use. Digital multimedia plays a vital role in various real time applications and therefore, there is a need for the development of more powerful and robust algorithms in order to strengthen their security. In this paper, we proposed a self-embedding fragile image authentication method based on Singular Value Decomposition (SVD). First the original image was divided into non-overlapping blocks and thereafter, each block was further divided into two parts: upper part and bottom part. After block separation, SVD was performed to generate the authentication information for both upper and bottom parts of each block, which were concatenated to generate the authentication code. We performed a series of attacking experiments on the original image to test the robustness of the proposed method. The recovered imperceptibility of the proposed scheme was measured using False Positive Rate (FPR), False Negative Rate (FNR), Peak Signal to Noise Ratio (PSNR), and Structural Similarity (SSIM). It was found that our method not only surpassed previous methods in PSNR but FNR and FPR as well. The experimental results showed an excellent visual imperceptibility against a variety of attacks. The proposed method detected image tampering precisely, and even after massive tampering, it was able to recover the tampered image with high quality.

Authentication of an Image with Sha-1 and Invariant Vector Distances

The two primary objectives of image authentication are Discrimination and Robustness. The SHA-1 algorithm, invariant vector distance and ring division are implemented to authenticate the image by using hash value to enhance discriminative capability and rotation robustness. The statistical features like central moments of the picture which contains rings in homogenous CIE L*a*b* model are unwavering because the image rotation is not linked to the ring division. Specifically, the digital operations of an image are not changed with respect to Euclidean distance and feature vectors. This makes message digest discriminative and dense. Several tests conducted with more than 200 color images and reveals that for common image digital operations this algorithm for image authentication is strong to estimate the efficiency. Among all the existing hashing algorithms, the projected technique for image authentication is demonstrated as superior.

A new digital image tamper detection algorithm based on integer wavelet transform and secured by encrypted authentication sequence with 3D quantum map

In this paper, a new gray scale image authentication technique is proposed in the integer wavelet transform (IWT) domain. Digital images as an extensive media today have a special place in human life. Therefore, the importance of protecting the main concept of images and preventing the change of its original content is of particular importance. Today, a variety of methods are proposed to protect digital images that watermarking based authentication is an example of them. Some of the methods presented in this area do not have enough security at the algorithmic level, and they are usually used a common logo without encryption in embedding algorithm. This causes security weaknesses for the algorithm. So, to prevent this type of security problem for the algorithm, as well as to create a long-key encryption concept, in this paper we have used a 3D quantum map. This map has a large key space and provides long-term security for the algorithm. In addition, a new permutation algorithm is proposed and after image permutation and 2 × 2 blocking the block based Singular Value Decomposition (SVD) performs on image. The U matrix of each block is encrypted with the generated sequence by the chaos map. After generating the authentication sequence, the embedding algorithm inserts the encrypted sequence into the IWT coefficients. The simulation results of the proposed algorithm reflects the efficiency of this technique in terms of embedding visual quality, maintain the structure of the cover image, low running time and detection accuracy which have been evaluated by PSNR, SSIM, NCC, TDR, FPR and FNR metrics.

Semi-fragile self-recovery watermarking scheme based on data representation through combination

The widely available multimedia editing tools and their large reconstruction capabilities make digital multimedia content more sensitive to malicious tampering and manipulations. Therefore, ensuring digital image integrity has become a crucial issue. Watermarking became a popular technique for image authentication. The goal of this paper is to propose a new semi-fragile watermarking scheme for image authentication, localization, and recovery, by using two different watermarks jointly. The embedded information watermark for content recovery is computed from discrete wavelet transform (DWT) approximation coefficients of second level decomposition of the original image and compressed by using Data Representation through Combination (DRC) in order to reduce watermark payload. On another hand, authentication watermark used for both authentication and localization of image tampering is computed by using the block-based watermarking algorithm. Three pseudo-random maps are generated in order to improve the security of the proposed scheme against local attack. Both watermarks are embedded into approximation sub-band of the first wavelet decomposition. Experimental results show that our proposed approach has not only an extremely high accuracy of tampering localization but also a relatively very high recovery rate. Besides, the scheme is able to detect perfectly the difference between malicious attacks and non-malicious attacks such as JPEG compression.

Digital Images Authentication Technique Based on DWT, DCT and Local Binary Patterns.

In the last few years, the world has witnessed a ground-breaking growth in the use of digital images and their applications in the modern society. In addition, image editing applications have downplayed the modification of digital photos and this compromises the authenticity and veracity of a digital image. These applications allow for tampering the content of the image without leaving visible traces. In addition to this, the easiness of distributing information through the Internet has caused society to accept everything it sees as true without questioning its integrity. This paper proposes a digital image authentication technique that combines the analysis of local texture patterns with the discrete wavelet transform and the discrete cosine transform to extract features from each of the blocks of an image. Subsequently, it uses a vector support machine to create a model that allows verification of the authenticity of the image. Experiments were performed with falsified images from public databases widely used in the literature that demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed method.

A Bayer pattern-based fragile watermarking scheme for color image tamper detection and restoration

The security of multimedia documents becomes an urgent need, especially with the increasing image falsifications provided by the easy access and use of image manipulation tools. Hence, usage of image authentication techniques fulfills this need. In this paper, we propose an effective self-embedding fragile watermarking scheme for color images tamper detection and restoration. To decrease the capacity of insertion, a Bayer pattern is used to reduce the color host image into a gray-level watermark, to further improve the security Torus Automorphism permutation is used to scramble the gray-level watermark. In our algorithm, three copies of the watermark are inserted over three components (R, G, and B channels) of the color host image, providing a high probability of detection accuracy and recovery if one copy is destroyed. In the tamper detection process, a majority voting technique is used to determine the legitimacy of the image and recover the tampered regions after interpolating the extracted gray-level watermark. Using our proposed method, tampering rate can achieve 25% with a high visual quality of recovered image and PSNR values greater than 34 (dB). Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method affords three major properties: the high quality of watermarked image, the sensitive tamper detection and high localization accuracy besides the high-quality of recovered image.

Image authentication and tamper localization based on relative difference between DCT coefficient and its estimated value

Digital images are increasingly transmitted over non-secure channels such as Internet, therefore image authentication techniques have recently gained great attention due to their importance for a large number of multimedia applications. To protect the authenticity of images, several approaches have been proposed. These approaches include conventional cryptography, semi-fragile watermarking and digital signatures. In this paper, we propose two techniques of the same type based on what we call characteristic data digest. Both techniques can blindly detect and localize malicious tampering, while maintaining reasonable tolerance to conventional content-preserving manipulations. The characteristic data is derived from the relative difference between each pair of selected DCT coefficient, AC for one technique and DC for another technique, in a central block and its counterpart estimated by the center block and its adjacent blocks. In order to maintain the relative difference relationship when the image undergoes legitimate processing, we make a pre-compensation for the coefficients. Experimental results show that our techniques are significantly superior to semi-fragile techniques under the condition of the same image fidelity, especially in tolerance range of legitimate processing, and/or the ability to detect and localize the tampered area. Due to the simplicity of the algorithms, our techniques can be used in video frame authentication, and even other digital media. In addition, this kind of proposed techniques can be extended to use other characteristic data, such as high-level moment, statistical data of images, and so on.