Evaluation of Deep Learning and Conventional Approaches for Image Recaptured Detection in Multimedia Forensics

Image recaptured from a high-resolution LED screen or a good quality printer is difficult to distinguish from its original counterpart. The forensic community paid less attention to this type of forgery than to other image alterations such as splicing, copy-move, removal, or image retouching. It is significant to develop secure and automatic techniques to distinguish real and recaptured images without prior knowledge. Image manipulation traces can be hidden using recaptured images. For this reason, being able to detect recapture images becomes a hot research topic for a forensic analyst. The attacker can recapture the manipulated images to fool image forensic system. As far as we know, there is no prior research that has examined the pros and cons of up-to-date image recaptured techniques. The main objective of this survey was to succinctly review the recent outcomes in the field of image recaptured detection and investigated the limitations in existing approaches and datasets. The outcome of this study provides several promising directions for further significant research on image recaptured detection. Finally, some of the challenges in the existing datasets and numerous promising directions on recaptured image detection are proposed to demonstrate how these difficulties might be carried into promising directions for future research. We also discussed the existing image recaptured datasets, their limitations, and dataset collection challenges.publishedVersio

Multimedia Forensics

This book is open access. Media forensics has never been more relevant to societal life. Not only media content represents an ever-increasing share of the data traveling on the net and the preferred communications means for most users, it has also become integral part of most innovative applications in the digital information ecosystem that serves various sectors of society, from the entertainment, to journalism, to politics. Undoubtedly, the advances in deep learning and computational imaging contributed significantly to this outcome. The underlying technologies that drive this trend, however, also pose a profound challenge in establishing trust in what we see, hear, and read, and make media content the preferred target of malicious attacks. In this new threat landscape powered by innovative imaging technologies and sophisticated tools, based on autoencoders and generative adversarial networks, this book fills an important gap. It presents a comprehensive review of state-of-the-art forensics capabilities that relate to media attribution, integrity and authenticity verification, and counter forensics. Its content is developed to provide practitioners, researchers, photo and video enthusiasts, and students a holistic view of the field

Multimedia Forensics

This book is open access. Media forensics has never been more relevant to societal life. Not only media content represents an ever-increasing share of the data traveling on the net and the preferred communications means for most users, it has also become integral part of most innovative applications in the digital information ecosystem that serves various sectors of society, from the entertainment, to journalism, to politics. Undoubtedly, the advances in deep learning and computational imaging contributed significantly to this outcome. The underlying technologies that drive this trend, however, also pose a profound challenge in establishing trust in what we see, hear, and read, and make media content the preferred target of malicious attacks. In this new threat landscape powered by innovative imaging technologies and sophisticated tools, based on autoencoders and generative adversarial networks, this book fills an important gap. It presents a comprehensive review of state-of-the-art forensics capabilities that relate to media attribution, integrity and authenticity verification, and counter forensics. Its content is developed to provide practitioners, researchers, photo and video enthusiasts, and students a holistic view of the field

Photogrammetric surveys and geometric processes to analyse and monitor red coral colonies

This article describes the set of photogrammetric tools developed for the monitoring of Mediterranean red coral Corallium rubrum populations. The description encompasses the full processing chain: from the image acquisition to the information extraction and data interpretation. The methods applied take advantage of existing tools and new, innovative and specific developments in order to acquire data on relevant ecological information concerning the structure and functioning of a red coral population. The tools presented here are based on: (i) automatic orientation using coded quadrats; (ii) use of non-photorealistic rendering (NPR) and 3D skeletonization techniques; (iii) computation of distances between colonies from a same site; and (iv) the use of a plenoptic approach in an underwater environment. © 2018 by the authors.This work is partially done in the framework of the PERfECT project, funded by the Foundation TOTAL, project 2014/257. The plenoptic camera was bought in the frame of the DGA RAPID LORI project (LOcalisation et Reconnaissance d’objets Immergés

Image and Video Forensics

Nowadays, images and videos have become the main modalities of information being exchanged in everyday life, and their pervasiveness has led the image forensics community to question their reliability, integrity, confidentiality, and security. Multimedia contents are generated in many different ways through the use of consumer electronics and high-quality digital imaging devices, such as smartphones, digital cameras, tablets, and wearable and IoT devices. The ever-increasing convenience of image acquisition has facilitated instant distribution and sharing of digital images on digital social platforms, determining a great amount of exchange data. Moreover, the pervasiveness of powerful image editing tools has allowed the manipulation of digital images for malicious or criminal ends, up to the creation of synthesized images and videos with the use of deep learning techniques. In response to these threats, the multimedia forensics community has produced major research efforts regarding the identification of the source and the detection of manipulation. In all cases (e.g., forensic investigations, fake news debunking, information warfare, and cyberattacks) where images and videos serve as critical evidence, forensic technologies that help to determine the origin, authenticity, and integrity of multimedia content can become essential tools. This book aims to collect a diverse and complementary set of articles that demonstrate new developments and applications in image and video forensics to tackle new and serious challenges to ensure media authenticity

Dataremix: Aesthetic Experiences of Big Data and Data Abstraction

This PhD by published work expands on the contribution to knowledge in two recent large-scale transdisciplinary artistic research projects: ATLAS in silico and INSTRUMENT | One Antarctic Night and their exhibited and published outputs. The thesis reflects upon this practice-based artistic research that interrogates data abstraction: the digitization, datafication and abstraction of culture and nature, as vast and abstract digital data. The research is situated in digital arts practices that engage a combination of big (scientific) data as artistic material, embodied interaction in virtual environments, and poetic recombination. A transdisciplinary and collaborative artistic practice, x-resonance, provides a framework for the hybrid processes, outcomes, and contributions to knowledge from the research. These are purposefully and productively situated at the objective | subjective interface, have potential to convey multiple meanings simultaneously to a variety of audiences and resist disciplinary definition. In the course of the research, a novel methodology emerges, dataremix, which is employed and iteratively evolved through artistic practice to address the research questions: 1) How can a visceral and poetic experience of data abstraction be created? and 2) How would one go about generating an artistically-informed (scientific) discovery? Several interconnected contributions to knowledge arise through the first research question: creation of representational elements for artistic visualization of big (scientific) data that includes four new forms (genomic calligraphy, algorithmic objects as natural specimens, scalable auditory data signatures, and signal objects); an aesthetic of slowness that contributes an extension to the operative forces in Jevbratt’s inverted sublime of looking down and in to also include looking fast and slow; an extension of Corby’s objective and subjective image consisting of “informational and aesthetic components” to novel virtual environments created from big 3 (scientific) data that extend Davies’ poetic virtual spatiality to poetic objective | subjective generative virtual spaces; and an extension of Seaman’s embodied interactive recombinant poetics through embodied interaction in virtual environments as a recapitulation of scientific (objective) and algorithmic processes through aesthetic (subjective) physical gestures. These contributions holistically combine in the artworks ATLAS in silico and INSTRUMENT | One Antarctic Night to create visceral poetic experiences of big data abstraction. Contributions to knowledge from the first research question develop artworks that are visceral and poetic experiences of data abstraction, and which manifest the objective | subjective through art. Contributions to knowledge from the second research question occur through the process of the artworks functioning as experimental systems in which experiments using analytical tools from the scientific domain are enacted within the process of creation of the artwork. The results are “returned” into the artwork. These contributions are: elucidating differences in DNA helix bending and curvature along regions of gene sequences specified as either introns or exons, revealing nuanced differences in BLAST results in relation to genomics sequence metadata, and cross-correlation of astronomical data to identify putative variable signals from astronomical objects for further scientific evaluation

Environmental Odour

Environmental odour is perceived as a major nuisance by rural as well as urban populations. The sources of odourous substances are manifold. In urban areas, these include restaurants, small manufacturing trades, and other sources, which might cause complaints. In the suburbs, wastewater treatment plants, landfill sites, and other infrastructures are the expected major odour sources. These problems are often caused be the accelerated growth of cities. In rural sites, livestock farming and the spreading of manure on the fields is blamed for severe odour annoyance. In fact, environmental odours are considered to be a common cause of public complaints by residents to local authorities, regional, or national environmental agencies. This Special Issue of Atmosphere will address the entire chain, from the quantification of odour sources, abatement methods, the dilution in the atmosphere, and the assessment of odour exposure for the assessment of annoyance. In particular, this Special Issue aims to encourage contributions dealing with field trials and dispersion modeling to assess the degree of annoyance and the quantitative success of abatement measures

Molecular Pharmacology and Pathology of Strokes

Stroke, a progressively non-communicable disease, is the second leading cause of death after coronary heart disease in developed countries. The present treatment options for stroke are adapting lifestyle practices, diabetes treatment, drugs, and the management of other factors, but no cure is yet available, despite new insights into molecular and therapeutic targets. Discoveries related to explicating the molecular pharmacology in cerebrovascular function and thrombosis have led to significant advancements in the current treatment paradigm for patients with stroke. Hence, this Special Issue invited scientific papers and reviews from researchers to provide solid evidence from a molecular point of view to scrutinize the molecular pharmacology and pathology of strokes. Platelet activation plays a major role in cardio and cerebrovascular diseases. Platelets also play a key role in the hemostatic process and are associated with various pathological events, such as arterial thrombosis and atherosclerosis. While the currently used anti-platelet drugs such as aspirin and clopidogrel demonstrate efficacy in many patients, they exert undesirable side effects. Therefore, the development of effective therapeutic strategies for the prevention and treatment of thrombotic diseases is a significant priority. Recently, precious metal drugs have conquered the subject of metal-based drugs, and several investigators have moved their attention to the synthesis of various ruthenium (Ru) and iridium (Ir) complexes due to their prospective therapeutic values. We have published this e-book about the “Molecular Pharmacology and Pathology of Strokes” and anticipate that readers will find this book useful regarding the significant challenges and current advances that are presently being made in stroke research, with the possibility of inspiring the application of novel drug development to enrich the devotion and treatment of patients with cardiovascular diseases