922 research outputs found

    An Improved DC Recovery Method from AC Coefficients of DCT-Transformed Images

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    Motivated by the work of Uehara et al. [1], an improved method to recover DC coefficients from AC coefficients of DCT-transformed images is investigated in this work, which finds applications in cryptanalysis of selective multimedia encryption. The proposed under/over-flow rate minimization (FRM) method employs an optimization process to get a statistically more accurate estimation of unknown DC coefficients, thus achieving a better recovery performance. It was shown by experimental results based on 200 test images that the proposed DC recovery method significantly improves the quality of most recovered images in terms of the PSNR values and several state-of-the-art objective image quality assessment (IQA) metrics such as SSIM and MS-SSIM.Comment: 6 pages, 6 figures, ICIP 201

    Recovering Missing Coefficients in DCT-Transformed Images

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    A general method for recovering missing DCT coefficients in DCT-transformed images is presented in this work. We model the DCT coefficients recovery problem as an optimization problem and recover all missing DCT coefficients via linear programming. The visual quality of the recovered image gradually decreases as the number of missing DCT coefficients increases. For some images, the quality is surprisingly good even when more than 10 most significant DCT coefficients are missing. When only the DC coefficient is missing, the proposed algorithm outperforms existing methods according to experimental results conducted on 200 test images. The proposed recovery method can be used for cryptanalysis of DCT based selective encryption schemes and other applications.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure

    Recovering Sign Bits of DCT Coefficients in Digital Images as an Optimization Problem

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    Recovering unknown, missing, damaged, distorted or lost information in DCT coefficients is a common task in multiple applications of digital image processing, including image compression, selective image encryption, and image communications. This paper investigates recovery of a special type of information in DCT coefficients of digital images: sign bits. This problem can be modelled as a mixed integer linear programming (MILP) problem, which is NP-hard in general. To efficiently solve the problem, we propose two approximation methods: 1) a relaxation-based method that convert the MILP problem to a linear programming (LP) problem; 2) a divide-and-conquer method which splits the target image into sufficiently small regions, each of which can be more efficiently solved as an MILP problem, and then conducts a global optimization phase as a smaller MILP problem or an LP problem to maximize smoothness across different regions. To the best of our knowledge, we are the first who considered how to use global optimization to recover sign bits of DCT coefficients. We considered how the proposed methods can be applied to JPEG-encoded images and conducted extensive experiments to validate the performances of our proposed methods. The experimental results showed that the proposed methods worked well, especially when the number of unknown sign bits per DCT block is not too large. Compared with other existing methods, which are all based on simple error-concealment strategies, our proposed methods outperformed them with a substantial margin, both according to objective quality metrics (PSNR and SSIM) and also our subjective evaluation. Our work has a number of profound implications, e.g., more sign bits can be discarded to develop more efficient image compression methods, and image encryption methods based on sign bit encryption can be less secure than we previously understood.Comment: 13 pages, 8 figure

    Improved content based watermarking for images

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    Due to improvements in imaging technologies and the ease with which digital content can be created and manipulated, there is need for the copyright protection of digital content. It is also essential to have techniques for authentication of the content as well as the owner. To this end, this thesis proposes a robust and transparent scheme of watermarking that exploits the human visual systems’ sensitivity to frequency, along with local image characteristics obtained from the spatial domain, improving upon the content based image watermarking scheme of Kay and Izquierdo. We implement changes in this algorithm without much distortion to the image, while making it possible to extract the watermark by use of correlation. The underlying idea is generating a visual mask based on the human visual systems’ perception of image content. This mask is used to embed a decimal sequence, while keeping its amplitude below the distortion sensitivity of the image pixel. We consider texture, luminance, corner and the edge information in the image to generate a mask that makes the addition of the watermark less perceptible to the human eye. The operation of embedding and extraction of the watermark is done in the frequency domain thereby providing robustness against common frequency-based attacks including image compression and filtering. We use decimal sequences for watermarking instead of pseudo random sequences, providing us with a greater flexibility in the choice of sequence. Weighted Peak Signal to Noise Ratio is used to evaluate the perceptual change between the original and the watermarked image

    Spread spectrum-based video watermarking algorithms for copyright protection

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    Merged with duplicate record 10026.1/2263 on 14.03.2017 by CS (TIS)Digital technologies know an unprecedented expansion in the last years. The consumer can now benefit from hardware and software which was considered state-of-the-art several years ago. The advantages offered by the digital technologies are major but the same digital technology opens the door for unlimited piracy. Copying an analogue VCR tape was certainly possible and relatively easy, in spite of various forms of protection, but due to the analogue environment, the subsequent copies had an inherent loss in quality. This was a natural way of limiting the multiple copying of a video material. With digital technology, this barrier disappears, being possible to make as many copies as desired, without any loss in quality whatsoever. Digital watermarking is one of the best available tools for fighting this threat. The aim of the present work was to develop a digital watermarking system compliant with the recommendations drawn by the EBU, for video broadcast monitoring. Since the watermark can be inserted in either spatial domain or transform domain, this aspect was investigated and led to the conclusion that wavelet transform is one of the best solutions available. Since watermarking is not an easy task, especially considering the robustness under various attacks several techniques were employed in order to increase the capacity/robustness of the system: spread-spectrum and modulation techniques to cast the watermark, powerful error correction to protect the mark, human visual models to insert a robust mark and to ensure its invisibility. The combination of these methods led to a major improvement, but yet the system wasn't robust to several important geometrical attacks. In order to achieve this last milestone, the system uses two distinct watermarks: a spatial domain reference watermark and the main watermark embedded in the wavelet domain. By using this reference watermark and techniques specific to image registration, the system is able to determine the parameters of the attack and revert it. Once the attack was reverted, the main watermark is recovered. The final result is a high capacity, blind DWr-based video watermarking system, robust to a wide range of attacks.BBC Research & Developmen
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