Pixel Pairs Research Articles

Enhanced reversible data hiding using difference expansion and modulus function with selective bit blocks in images

The rapid growth of Information and communication technology not only has positive impacts but also unveils opportunities for data and information security threats. In recent years, many researchers have worked on developing methods to enhance data security, particularly through data hiding techniques aimed at safeguarding communications by concealing their existence. With the same objective in mind, this study introduces a novel method for Reversible Data Hiding (RDH) based on a combination of difference expansion (DE) and a modulus function. Our method enables the embedding of 3-bit data into 2-bit Least Significant Bit (LSB) difference values of pixel pairs formed in rectangular blocks. Based on the experimental results, the payload capacity of our method can reach 0.3953 bpp with a PSNR of 53.5900 dB on common images and 0.5764 bpp with a PSNR of 52.9234 dB on medical images. Our method consistently achieves high payload capacity with good visual quality, and our method surpasses previous approaches in terms of performance, payload capacity, and visual quality.

MRA-VSS: A Matrix-Based Reversible and Authenticable Visual Secret-Sharing Scheme Using Dual Meaningful Images

Reversible data hiding (RDH) is an approach that emphasizes the imperceptibility of hidden confidential data and the restoration of the original cover image. To achieve these objectives at the same time, in this paper, we design a matrix-based crossover data hiding strategy and then propose a novel matrix-based RDH scheme with dual meaningful image shadows, called MRA-VSS (matrix-based reversible and authenticable visual secret-sharing). Each pixel in a secret image is divided into two parts, and each part is embedded into a cover pixel pair by referring to the intersection point of four overlapping frames. During the share construction phase, not only partial information of the pixel in a secret image but also authentication codes are embedded into the corresponding cover pixel pair. Finally, two meaningful image shadows are derived. The experimental results confirm that our designed MRA-VSS successfully embeds pixels’ partial information and authentication code into cover pixel pairs at the cost of slight distortion during data hiding. Nevertheless, the robustness of our scheme under the steganalysis attack and the authentication capability of our scheme are also proven.

Next-Generation Secure and Reversible Watermarking for Medical Images using Hybrid Radon-Slantlet Transform

This research article proposes a security-enhanced watermarking method for medical images using the Radon and Slantlet transforms. The first step involves transforming the cover image from the spatial domain to the Radon domain. This transformation involves rotation, scaling, and translation through the Radon transform, which alters the locations of concealed bits. As a result, identifying the embedded data poses a considerable challenge. The embedded data cannot be identified without employing the inverse Radon transform. Subsequently, the Radon-transformed image is converted to the frequency domain using the Slantlet transform. Secret bits are incorporated into frequency coefficients during this phase through the pixel pair mapping approach. The final watermarked image is generated by inserting side information into the robust watermarked image. Simulation experiments are carried out to evaluate the imperceptibility of watermarks in medical images, employing metrics such as PSNR and SSIM. The results indicate high imperceptibility, with PSNR values exceeding 45 dB and SSIM values surpassing 0.95 for all tested images. Furthermore, the proposed method's robustness and reversibility are assessed by exposing watermarked images to various attacks. Performance is measured through the BER and NCC. Experimental findings reveal a BER of 0.2 % for the watermarked information, indicating strong resilience against attacks. Additionally, the NCC is determined to be 0.96, highlighting a high level of reversibility in extracting embedded data.

The 3D Lyman-α forest power spectrum from eBOSS DR16

Abstract We measure the three-dimensional power spectrum (P3D) of the transmitted flux in the Lyman-α (Ly-α) forest using the complete extended Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey data release 16 (eBOSS DR16). This sample consists of ∼ 205,000 quasar spectra in the redshift range 2 ≤ z ≤ 4 at an effective redshift z = 2.334. We propose a pair-count spectral estimator in configuration space, weighting each pair by exp (ik · r), for wave vector k and pixel pair separation r, effectively measuring the anisotropic power spectrum without the need for fast Fourier transforms. This accounts for the window matrix in a tractable way, avoiding artifacts found in Fourier-transform based power spectrum estimators due to the sparse sampling transverse to the line-of-sight of Ly-α skewers. We extensively test our pipeline on two sets of mocks: (i) idealized Gaussian random fields with a sparse sampling of Ly-α skewers, and (ii) log-normal LyaCoLoRe mocks including realistic noise levels, the eBOSS survey geometry and contaminants. On eBOSS DR16 data, the Kaiser formula with a non-linear correction term obtained from hydrodynamic simulations yields a good fit to the power spectrum data in the range (0.02 ≤ k ≤ 0.35) h Mpc−1 at the 1 − 2σ level with a covariance matrix derived from LyaCoLoRe mocks. We demonstrate a promising new approach for full-shape cosmological analyses of Ly-α forest data from cosmological surveys such as eBOSS, the currently observing Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument and future surveys such as the Prime Focus Spectrograph, WEAVE-QSO and 4MOST.

UAV Visual Tracking with Enhanced Feature Information

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) visual tracking is an important research direction. The tracking object is lost due to the problems of target occlusion, illumination variation, flight vibration and so on. Therefore, based on a Siamese network, this study proposes a UAVs visual tracker named SiamDFT++ to enhance the correlation of depth features. First, the network width of the three-layer convolution after the full convolution neural network is doubled, and the appearance information of the target is fully utilized to complete the feature extraction of the template frame and the detection frame. Then, the attention information fusion module and feature deep convolution module are proposed in the template branch and the detection branch, respectively. The feature correlation calculation methods of the two depths can effectively suppress the background information, enhance the correlation between pixel pairs, and efficiently complete the tasks of classification and regression. Furthermore, this study makes full use of shallow features to enhance the extraction of object features. Finally, this study uses the methods of deep cross-correlation operation and complete intersection over union to complete the matching and location tasks. The experimental results show that the tracker has strong robustness in UAVs short-term tracking scenes and long-term tracking scenes.

A Graph Multi-separator Problem for Image Segmentation

We propose a novel abstraction of the image segmentation task in the form of a combinatorial optimization problem that we call the multi-separator problem. Feasible solutions indicate for every pixel whether it belongs to a segment or a segment separator, and indicate for pairs of pixels whether or not the pixels belong to the same segment. This is in contrast to the closely related lifted multicut problem, where every pixel is associated with a segment and no pixel explicitly represents a separating structure. While the multi-separator problem is np-hard, we identify two special cases for which it can be solved efficiently. Moreover, we define two local search algorithms for the general case and demonstrate their effectiveness in segmenting simulated volume images of foam cells and filaments.

A Novel Method for Inshore Ship Detection in Remote Sensing Images using FFT via Pose Estimation

It's a hard job to detect a ship these days. Even with the growth of technology to detect a vessel in the Shore using high-resolution satellite image software, it is still regarded a complicated and difficult job. Because of the various amounts of storms and factors accessible in the harbor sensing this sort of forms these days have become challenging duties. Some of the most common methods that are being used for detecting these types of ships include, 1) Possible pose estimation technique depending upon RGA 2) Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) 3) Pose weighted voting of ship 4) Score map post-processing. These methods are mainly used for increasing the effectively of the detecting techniques. In the technique which uses the technology of RGA and depending upon this the possible pose estimation is being made. This method clearly States how the ship can be easily found within a harbor by using various types of pixel pairs with various types of directions and size. In order to increase the effectiveness of various types of destructor and interferences are being used to determine the fast Fourier transform technique. Along with that they also used the score map post processing technology.

Classification methods for hyperspectral remote sensing images with weak texture features

In order to provide method support for remote sensing image classification of weak texture region and improve the classification effect, a remote sensing image classification model for weak texture region was constructed. Firstly, the Gray Level Co-occurrence Matrix (GLCM) was used to extract texture features, then the correlation between texture features was reduced by dimensionality reduction method, and finally the spectral features were fused to classify remote sensing images. In the experimental part, neural network classifier was used to classify images based on texture feature, spectral feature and spectral features combined with texture features, and the results ware compared with object-oriented classification method. The analysis of texture extraction in the study area shows that the texture feature image obtained in the 5 × 5 window has higher resolution than that in the 7 × 7 window, and more robust texture features can be obtained in the range of 4∼8 pixel pairs. When using neural network classifier for classification, compared with images based on spectral features and texture features, the overall classification accuracy (OA) of the proposed classification model is increased by 16.72% and 11.16%, respectively, and the Kappa coefficient is increased by 0.2824 and 0.1943, respectively. Compared with the object-oriented classification method, the overall classification accuracy of the proposed classification scheme is increased by 1.15%, and the Kappa coefficient is increased by 0.0191. The constructed model has good classification effect and high classification accuracy for remote sensing images of weak texture region, and can provide scientific reference for remote sensing image classification of weak texture region.

Earlier smart prediction of diabetic retinopathy from fundus image under innovative ResNet optimization maneuver

AbstractDiabetic retinopathy (DR) is a complication of diabetes that causes blindness and the early detection of diabetics using retinopathy images remains a challenging task. Hence, a novel, earlier smart prediction of diabetic retinopathy from fundus image under Innovative ResNet Optimization is introduced to effectively detect the earlier stage of DR from Fundus image. Initially, the fundus image is scaled during preprocessing and converted into a grayscale format. As the existing studies neglect some deserving unique features that are crucial for predicting the earliest signs of DR, a novel Fractional Radon Transform with Visibility Graph is introduced for extracting the novel features such as microaneurysms count, dot and blot hemorrhages count, statistical measures, and retinal layer thickness, in which a Generalized Cosine Fractional Radon Transform is used to capture the image’s fine-scale texture information thereby effectively capturing the statistical measures, while a weighted Horizontal Visibility Graph is made to examine the apparent spatial relationships between pixel pairs in the image based on the values of the pixels’ gray levels. Further, the existing works failed to identify the small fine dark areas that were ignored throughout the morphological opening process. In order to overcome this issue, a Morphological Black Hat Transform with Optimized ResNet Algorithm is implemented, where segmentation is made through Enriched Black Hat Transform-based Morphological operation to identify fine dark regions among the pixels inside the eye samples, and the classification is done by using ResNet-driven S-GOA (Socio Grasshopper Optimization Algorithm), to optimally predict the stages of DR. The result obtained showed that the proposed model outperforms existing techniques with high performance and accuracy.

Complex Network View of the Sun’s Magnetic Patches. I. Identification

Solar and stellar magnetic patches (i.e., magnetic fluxes that reach the surface from the interior) are believed to be the primary sources of a star’s atmospheric conditions. Here, we apply the complex network approach and investigate its efficacy in the identification of these features. For this purpose, we use the line-of-sight magnetograms provided by the Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager on board the Solar Dynamics Observatory. We construct the magnetic network following a specific visibility graph condition between pairs of pixels with opposite polarities and search for possible links between these regions. The complex network facilitates the construction of node degrees and PageRank images, and applying the downhill algorithm to node-degree images allows for the grouping of pixels into features corresponding to one-to-one matches with magnetogram patches. This approach promisingly serves to identify the nontrivial morphological structure of the magnetic patches for small and large sizes. We observe that the changes in the features of the node-degree images effectively correspond to the cospatial magnetic patches over time. Through visual assessment, we estimate an average false-negative error rate of approximately 1% in identifying small-scale features (one or two pixels in size).

Toward robust image encryption based on chaos theory and DNA computing

Due to the significant importance of image security for various users, there is an ongoing need to develop innovative algorithms to enhance this security. Image security typically involves encryption techniques. This study has tackled the challenge of creating an efficient, secure, and resilient image cipher by using pixel-swapping techniques at both DNA and decimal levels. The swapping methods include four different approaches that involve randomly selecting pixel pairs to swap with adjacent pixels—either left, right, upper, or lower—based on random numbers generated by a chaotic map. Specifically, the 2D Tinkerbell chaotic map was used to generate the necessary random numbers for diffusion and confusion processes in the encryption. Additionally, through careful arithmetic operations, two more random number streams were derived from the main streams produced by the chaotic map. Thorough performance analyses and computer simulations have shown that this image cipher is robust, secure, and resilient against various threats, making it suitable for practical applications. Notably, the cipher achieved a very high information entropy value of 7.9975, indicating its effectiveness in encryption.

Color-to-Gray Conversion Method Based on Chroma Difference

Most of the images encountered in daily life are color images, yet grayscale remains prevalent in many fields due to its reduced data size and simplified operations. When reducing the dimensions of a three-channel color image to a single-channel grayscale, a portion of the original color information is inevitably lost. To yield high-quality grayscale images, this study introduces a color-to-gray conversion method based on chroma difference. This method defines a novel color distance metric for color-to-grayscale conversion, incorporating pixel chromaticity differences alongside brightness variations. The discrepancy in gray pixel values in the output grayscale image effectively mirrors the overall differences among input color image pixels. Optimization is conducted using the conjugate gradient method, ensuring appropriate reflection of luminance information from the input image and chromaticity data from the original color image within the grayscale rendering. Experimental validation confirms the efficacy of this approach. However, as the method accounts for all pixel pairs, it occasionally considers unnecessary pairs, leading to potential distortion in color differences between pixels and consequent inadequacies in chromaticity variation. To address this issue, a weighting factor is introduced, prioritizing color combinations with similar color differences. Experimental findings demonstrate that grayscale images produced using the proposed method outperform those generated by alternative approaches in preserving color differentials and retaining detailed features of the original image. The resulting output exhibits clear and natural outlines, as supported by both subjective and objective assessments.

Adaptively identify and refine ill-posed regions for accurate stereo matching

Stereo matching cost constrains the consistency between pixel pairs. However, the consistency constraint becomes unreliable in ill-posed regions such as occluded or ambiguous regions of the images, making it difficult to explore hidden correspondences. To address this challenge, we introduce an Error-area Feature Refinement Mechanism (EFR) that supplies context features for ill-posed regions. In EFR, we innovatively obtain the suspected error region according to aggregation perturbations, then a simple Transformer module is designed to synthesize global context and correspondence relation with the identified error mask. To better overcome existing texture overfitting, we put forward a Dual-constraint Cost Volume (DCV) that integrates supplementary constraints. This effectively improves the robustness and diversity of disparity clues, resulting in enhanced details and structural accuracy. Finally, we propose a highly accurate stereo matching network called Error-rectify Feature Guided Stereo Matching Network (ERCNet), which is based on DCV and EFR. We evaluate our model on several benchmark datasets, achieving state-of-the-art performance and demonstrating excellent generalization across datasets. The code is available at https://github.com/dean7liu/ERCNet_2023.

Denoised Non-Local Neural Network for Semantic Segmentation.

The non-local (NL) network has become a widely used technique for semantic segmentation, which computes an attention map to measure the relationships of each pixel pair. However, most of the current popular NL models tend to ignore the phenomenon that the calculated attention map appears to be very noisy, containing interclass and intraclass inconsistencies, which lowers the accuracy and reliability of the NL methods. In this article, we figuratively denote these inconsistencies as attention noises and explore the solutions to denoise them. Specifically, we inventively propose a denoised NL network, which consists of two primary modules, i.e., the global rectifying (GR) block and the local retention (LR) block, to eliminate the interclass and intraclass noises, respectively. First, GR adopts the class-level predictions to capture a binary map to distinguish whether the selected two pixels belong to the same category. Second, LR captures the ignored local dependencies and further uses them to rectify the unwanted hollows in the attention map. The experimental results on two challenging semantic segmentation datasets demonstrate the superior performance of our model. Without any external training data, our proposed denoised NL can achieve the state-of-the-art performance of 83.5% and 46.69% mean of classwise intersection over union (mIoU) on Cityscapes and ADE20K, respectively.

AUD-Net: A Unified Deep Detector for Multiple Hyperspectral Image Anomaly Detection via Relation and Few-Shot Learning.

This article addresses the problem of the building an out-of-the-box deep detector, motivated by the need to perform anomaly detection across multiple hyperspectral images (HSIs) without repeated training. To solve this challenging task, we propose a unified detector [anomaly detection network (AUD-Net)] inspired by few-shot learning. The crucial issues solved by AUD-Net include: how to improve the generalization of the model on various HSIs that contain different categories of land cover; and how to unify the different spectral sizes between HSIs. To achieve this, we first build a series of subtasks to classify the relations between the center and its surroundings in the dual window. Through relation learning, AUD-Net can be more easily generalized to unseen HSIs, as the relations of the pixel pairs are shared among different HSIs. Secondly, to handle different HSIs with various spectral sizes, we propose a pooling layer based on the vector of local aggregated descriptors, which maps the variable-sized features to the same space and acquires the fixed-sized relation embeddings. To determine whether the center of the dual window is an anomaly, we build a memory model by the transformer, which integrates the contextual relation embeddings in the dual window and estimates the relation embeddings of the center. By computing the feature difference between the estimated relation embeddings of the centers and the corresponding real ones, the centers with large differences will be detected as anomalies, as they are more difficult to be estimated by the corresponding surroundings. Extensive experiments on both the simulation dataset and 13 real HSIs demonstrate that this proposed AUD-Net has strong generalization for various HSIs and achieves significant advantages over the specific-trained detectors for each HSI.

Image cryptosystem with image key using integral disproportion

The subject matter of this article is the process of securing visual data through encryption. The goal of this study is to develop a new approach for image encryption and decryption using an image as a key, where security and performance are comparable or superior to alternatives. The tasks to be solved are as follows: developing a symmetric image cryptosystem for both greyscale and colored images in any format that can use an arbitrary image as a security key; adapting the capabilities of integral disproportionality for image encryption. The encryption method applies an integral disproportion formula for each pair of pixels’ components for both the input image and the key image starting from the first one. The output is a ciphered object represented as an array of real numbers, with decryption being the inverse process. The result is a novel approach to image encryption, proposing a new cryptosystem in which an arbitrary image of varying size, format, or content serves as the encryption key. The proposed symmetric full-encryption cryptosystem is applicable to both greyscale and colored images in any format. The method employs a frequency-based approach that influences the values of pixels rather than their positions. In contrast to mainstream approaches in this area, the representation of a cipher is not an image but a binary array. The proposed algorithm is simple to implement. The proposed method appears to meet the required requirements in both security and performance. Conclusions. The scientific novelty of the results obtained is as follows: This research introduces a new image encryption method, which is unique in its application of integral disproportionality to alter pixel values, differing from traditional encryption methods. This provides a practical yet secure option to the existing encryption techniques.

Component Identification and Depth Estimation for Structural Images Based on Multi-Scale Task Interaction Network

Component identification and depth estimation are important for detecting the integrity of post-disaster structures. However, traditional manual methods might be time-consuming, labor-intensive, and influenced by subjective judgments of inspectors. Deep-learning-based image visual inspection is a new approach to overcome these problems, but repeated modeling is required for different inspection tasks, which limits inspection accuracy and practical deployment efficiency. In this study, it is observed that the matched ratios of pixel pairs between component identification and depth estimation reach a high value, which indicates the dual tasks are highly related. Therefore, the Multi-Scale Task Interaction Network (MTI-Net) is proposed for structural images to simultaneously accomplish both tasks for accurate and efficient structural inspection. It propagates distilled task information from lower to higher scales. Then, it aggregates the refined task features from all scales to produce the final per-task predictions. Experiments show that MTI-Net delivers the full potential of multi-task learning, with a smaller memory footprint and higher efficiency compared to single-task learning. For the evaluation metrics of model performance, the mean Intersection over Union (mIoU) of component identification improves by 2.30, and root mean square error (RMSE) drops by 0.36 m with the aid of the multi-task strategy. The multi-task deep learning framework has great potential value in engineering applications.

Tensorial Evolutionary Optimization for Natural Image Matting

Natural image matting has garnered increasing attention in various computer vision applications. The matting problem aims to find the optimal foreground/background (F/B) color pair for each unknown pixel and thus obtain an alpha matte indicating the opacity of the foreground object. This problem is typically modeled as a large-scale pixel pair combinatorial optimization (PPCO) problem. Heuristic optimization is widely employed to tackle the PPCO problem owing to its gradient-free property and promising search ability. However, traditional heuristic methods often encode F/B solutions to a one-dimensional (1D) representation and then evolve the solutions in a 1D manner. This 1D representation destroys the intrinsic two-dimensional (2D) structure of images, where the significant spatial correlations among pixels are ignored. Moreover, the 1D representation also brings operation inefficiency. To address the above issues, this article develops a spatial-aware tensorial evolutionary image matting (TEIM) method. Specifically, the matting problem is modeled as a 2D Spatial-PPCO (S-PPCO) problem, and a global tensorial evolutionary optimizer is proposed to tackle the S-PPCO problem. The entire population is represented as a whole by a third-order tensor, in which individuals are classified into two types: F and B individuals for denoting the 2D F/B solutions, respectively. The evolution process, consisting of three tensorial evolutionary operators, is implemented based on pure tensor computation for efficiently seeking F/B solutions. The local spatial smoothness of images is also integrated into the evaluation process for obtaining a high-quality alpha matte. Experimental results compared with state-of-the-art methods validate the effectiveness of TEIM.

Image encryption scheme based on improved four-dimensional chaotic system and evolutionary operators

To enhance the security of image data transmission, and address the weaknesses of existing image encryption schemes based on chaotic systems, particularly concerning resistance to differential attacks and the unstable performance of chaotic systems, this article introduces an improved four-dimensional chaotic system and integrates evolutionary operators to propose an image encryption scheme. Firstly, a method for generating pseudo-random sequences associated with the plaintext is designed. The change rate of the ciphertext pixel value exceeds 0.9967 after a slight modification of the plaintext pixel value, significantly improving the plaintext sensitivity and the scheme's ability to resist selected plaintext attacks. Secondly, an individual rearrangement operation is introduced to achieve bit-level scrambling, and pixel-level scrambling is achieved by selection strategy. Subsequently, crossover and mutation operations are incorporated into image encryption. To reflect the randomness of the pairing, we adopt the pseudo-random sequence generated by the chaotic system to control the crossover and mutation operators, and a diffusion operation is performed on selected pixel pairs. Finally, ciphertext feedback is applied. Experimental results and performance analysis demonstrate that the proposed scheme not only enhances the security of encrypted images but also effectively resists noise and cropping attacks. This method effectively meets the high-security requirements of images in network transmission and provides new ideas for further research in the field of image encryption.

Advanced Dual Reversible Data Hiding: A Focus on Modification Direction and Enhanced Least Significant Bit (LSB) Approaches

In this study, we investigate advances in reversible data hiding (RDH), a critical area in the era of widespread digital data sharing. Recognizing the inherent vulnerabilities such as unauthorized access and data corruption during data transmission, we introduce an innovative dual approach to RDH. We use the EMD (Exploiting Modification Direction) method along with an optimized LSB (Least Significant Bit) replacement strategy. This dual method, applied to grayscale images, has been carefully developed to improve data hiding by focusing on modifying pixel pairs. Our approach sets new standards for achieving a balance between high data embedding rates and the integrity of visual quality. The EMD method ensures that each secret digit in a 5-ary notational system is hidden by 2 cover pixels. Meanwhile, our LSB strategy finely adjusts the pixels selected by EMD to minimize data errors. Despite its simplicity, this approach has been proven to outperform existing technologies. It offers a high embedding rate (ER) while maintaining the high visual quality of the stego images. Moreover, it significantly improves data hiding capacity. This enables the full recovery of the original image without increasing file size or adding unnecessary data, marking a significant breakthrough in data security.