Taming Reversible Halftoning via Predictive Luminance

Traditional halftoning usually drops colors when dithering images with binary dots, which makes it difficult to recover the original color information. We proposed a novel halftoning technique that converts a color image into a binary halftone with full restorability to its original version. Our novel base halftoning technique consists of two convolutional neural networks (CNNs) to produce the reversible halftone patterns, and a noise incentive block (NIB) to mitigate the flatness degradation issue of CNNs. Furthermore, to tackle the conflicts between the blue-noise quality and restoration accuracy in our novel base method, we proposed a predictor-embedded approach to offload predictable information from the network, which in our case is the luminance information resembling from the halftone pattern. Such an approach allows the network to gain more flexibility to produce halftones with better blue-noise quality without compromising the restoration quality. Detailed studies on the multiple-stage training method and loss weightings have been conducted. We have compared our predictor-embedded method and our novel method regarding spectrum analysis on halftone, halftone accuracy, restoration accuracy, and the data embedding studies. Our entropy evaluation evidences our halftone contains less encoding information than our novel base method. The experiments show our predictor-embedded method gains more flexibility to improve the blue-noise quality of halftones and maintains a comparable restoration quality with a higher tolerance for disturbances.Comment: to be published in IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphic

Vers l’anti-criminalistique en images numériques via la restauration d’images

Image forensics enjoys its increasing popularity as a powerful image authentication tool, working in a blind passive way without the aid of any a priori embedded information compared to fragile image watermarking. On its opponent side, image anti-forensics attacks forensic algorithms for the future development of more trustworthy forensics. When image coding or processing is involved, we notice that image anti-forensics to some extent shares a similar goal with image restoration. Both of them aim to recover the information lost during the image degradation, yet image anti-forensics has one additional indispensable forensic undetectability requirement. In this thesis, we form a new research line for image anti-forensics, by leveraging on advanced concepts/methods from image restoration meanwhile with integrations of anti-forensic strategies/terms. Under this context, this thesis contributes on the following four aspects for JPEG compression and median filtering anti-forensics: (i) JPEG anti-forensics using Total Variation based deblocking, (ii) improved Total Variation based JPEG anti-forensics with assignment problem based perceptual DCT histogram smoothing, (iii) JPEG anti-forensics using JPEG image quality enhancement based on a sophisticated image prior model and non-parametric DCT histogram smoothing based on calibration, and (iv) median filtered image quality enhancement and anti-forensics via variational deconvolution. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed anti-forensic methods with a better forensic undetectability against existing forensic detectors as well as a higher visual quality of the processed image, by comparisons with the state-of-the-art methods.La criminalistique en images numériques se développe comme un outil puissant pour l'authentification d'image, en travaillant de manière passive et aveugle sans l'aide d'informations d'authentification pré-intégrées dans l'image (contrairement au tatouage fragile d'image). En parallèle, l'anti-criminalistique se propose d'attaquer les algorithmes de criminalistique afin de maintenir une saine émulation susceptible d'aider à leur amélioration. En images numériques, l'anti-criminalistique partage quelques similitudes avec la restauration d'image : dans les deux cas, l'on souhaite approcher au mieux les informations perdues pendant un processus de dégradation d'image. Cependant, l'anti-criminalistique se doit de remplir au mieux un objectif supplémentaire, extit{i.e.} : être non détectable par la criminalistique actuelle. Dans cette thèse, nous proposons une nouvelle piste de recherche pour la criminalistique en images numériques, en tirant profit des concepts/méthodes avancés de la restauration d'image mais en intégrant des stratégies/termes spécifiquement anti-criminalistiques. Dans ce contexte, cette thèse apporte des contributions sur quatre aspects concernant, en criminalistique JPEG, (i) l'introduction du déblocage basé sur la variation totale pour contrer les méthodes de criminalistique JPEG et (ii) l'amélioration apportée par l'adjonction d'un lissage perceptuel de l'histogramme DCT, (iii) l'utilisation d'un modèle d'image sophistiqué et d'un lissage non paramétrique de l'histogramme DCT visant l'amélioration de la qualité de l'image falsifiée; et, en criminalistique du filtrage médian, (iv) l'introduction d'une méthode fondée sur la déconvolution variationnelle. Les résultats expérimentaux démontrent l'efficacité des méthodes anti-criminalistiques proposées, avec notamment une meilleure indétectabilité face aux détecteurs criminalistiques actuels ainsi qu'une meilleure qualité visuelle de l'image falsifiée par rapport aux méthodes anti-criminalistiques de l'état de l'art

High Capacity Analog Channels for Smart Documents

Widely-used valuable hardcopy documents such as passports, visas, driving licenses, educational certificates, entrance-passes for entertainment events etc. are conventionally protected against counterfeiting and data tampering attacks by applying analog security technologies (e.g. KINEGRAMS®, holograms, micro-printing, UV/IR inks etc.). How-ever, easy access to high quality, low price modern desktop publishing technology has left most of these technologies ineffective, giving rise to high quality false documents. The higher price and restricted usage are other drawbacks of the analog document pro-tection techniques. Digital watermarking and high capacity storage media such as IC-chips, optical data stripes etc. are the modern technologies being used in new machine-readable identity verification documents to ensure contents integrity; however, these technologies are either expensive or do not satisfy the application needs and demand to look for more efficient document protection technologies. In this research three different high capacity analog channels: high density data stripe (HD-DataStripe), data hiding in printed halftone images (watermarking), and super-posed constant background grayscale image (CBGI) are investigated for hidden com-munication along with their applications in smart documents. On way to develop high capacity analog channels, noise encountered from printing and scanning (PS) process is investigated with the objective to recover the digital information encoded at nearly maximum channel utilization. By utilizing noise behaviour, countermeasures against the noise are taken accordingly in data recovery process. HD-DataStripe is a printed binary image similar to the conventional 2-D barcodes (e.g. PDF417), but it offers much higher data storage capacity and is intended for machine-readable identity verification documents. The capacity offered by the HD-DataStripe is sufficient to store high quality biometric characteristics rather than extracted templates, in addition to the conventional bearer related data contained in a smart ID-card. It also eliminates the need for central database system (except for backup record) and other ex-pensive storage media, currently being used. While developing novel data-reading tech-nique for HD-DataStripe, to count for the unavoidable geometrical distortions, registra-tion marks pattern is chosen in such a way so that it results in accurate sampling points (a necessary condition for reliable data recovery at higher data encoding-rate). For more sophisticated distortions caused by the physical dot gain effects (intersymbol interfer-ence), the countermeasures such as application of sampling theorem, adaptive binariza-tion and post-data processing, each one of these providing only a necessary condition for reliable data recovery, are given. Finally, combining the various filters correspond-ing to these countermeasures, a novel Data-Reading technique for HD-DataStripe is given. The novel data-reading technique results in superior performance than the exist-ing techniques, intended for data recovery from printed media. In another scenario a small-size HD-DataStripe with maximum entropy is used as a copy detection pattern by utilizing information loss encountered at nearly maximum channel capacity. While considering the application of HD-DataStripe in hardcopy documents (contracts, official letters etc.), unlike existing work [Zha04], it allows one-to-one contents matching and does not depend on hash functions and OCR technology, constraints mainly imposed by the low data storage capacity offered by the existing analog media. For printed halftone images carrying hidden information higher capacity is mainly attributed to data-reading technique for HD-DataStripe that allows data recovery at higher printing resolution, a key requirement for a high quality watermarking technique in spatial domain. Digital halftoning and data encoding techniques are the other factors that contribute to data hiding technique given in this research. While considering security aspects, the new technique allows contents integrity and authenticity verification in the present scenario in which certain amount of errors are unavoidable, restricting the usage of existing techniques given for digital contents. Finally, a superposed constant background grayscale image, obtained by the repeated application of a specially designed small binary pattern, is used as channel for hidden communication and it allows up to 33 pages of A-4 size foreground text to be encoded in one CBGI. The higher capacity is contributed from data encoding symbols and data reading technique

Image Restoration using Automatic Damaged Regions Detection and Machine Learning-Based Inpainting Technique

In this dissertation we propose two novel image restoration schemes. The first pertains to automatic detection of damaged regions in old photographs and digital images of cracked paintings. In cases when inpainting mask generation cannot be completely automatic, our detection algorithm facilitates precise mask creation, particularly useful for images containing damage that is tedious to annotate or difficult to geometrically define. The main contribution of this dissertation is the development and utilization of a new inpainting technique, region hiding, to repair a single image by training a convolutional neural network on various transformations of that image. Region hiding is also effective in object removal tasks. Lastly, we present a segmentation system for distinguishing glands, stroma, and cells in slide images, in addition to current results, as one component of an ongoing project to aid in colon cancer prognostication

ZASTOSOWANIE METOD STEGANOGRAFICZNYCH DO ATAKÓW W SYSTEMACH INFORMACYJNO-KOMUNIKACYJNYCH

An analysis of steganography methods that are can be potentially used as instruments in attacks on information and communication systems is presented. The possible solutions to ensure resilience to such attacks are presented.W artykułe został przedstawiony przegląd istniejących i potencjalnie dostępnych technik steganograficznych, które mogą zostać użyte jako narzędzia do ataków na systemy informacyjne i komunikacyjne. Podano możliwe sposoby zapewnienia ochrony przed takimi atakami

ARMAS: Active Reconstruction of Missing Audio Segments

Digital audio signal reconstruction of a lost or corrupt segment using deep learning algorithms has been explored intensively in recent years. Nevertheless, prior traditional methods with linear interpolation, phase coding and tone insertion techniques are still in vogue. However, we found no research work on reconstructing audio signals with the fusion of dithering, steganography, and machine learning regressors. Therefore, this paper proposes the combination of steganography, halftoning (dithering), and state-of-the-art shallow (RF- Random Forest regression) and deep learning (LSTM- Long Short-Term Memory) methods. The results (including comparing the SPAIN, Autoregressive, deep learning-based, graph-based, and other methods) are evaluated with three different metrics. The observations from the results show that the proposed solution is effective and can enhance the reconstruction of audio signals performed by the side information (e.g., Latent representation and learning for audio inpainting) steganography provides. Moreover, this paper proposes a novel framework for reconstruction from heavily compressed embedded audio data using halftoning (i.e., dithering) and machine learning, which we termed the HCR (halftone-based compression and reconstruction). This work may trigger interest in optimising this approach and/or transferring it to different domains (i.e., image reconstruction). Compared to existing methods, we show improvement in the inpainting performance in terms of signal-to-noise (SNR), the objective difference grade (ODG) and the Hansen's audio quality metric.Comment: 9 pages, 2 Tables, 8 Figure