Image Splicing-Based Forgery Detection Using Discrete Wavelet Transform and Edge Weighted Local Binary Patterns

Abstract

With the advancement of the multimedia technology, the extensive accessibility of image editing applications makes it easier to tamper the contents of digital images. Furthermore, the distribution of digital images over the open channel using information and communication technology (ICT) makes it more vulnerable to forgery. The vulnerabilities in telecommunication infrastructure open the doors for intruders to introduce deceiving changes in image data, which is hard to detect. The forged images can create severe social and legal troubles if altered with malicious purpose. Image forgery detection necessitates the development of sophisticated techniques that can efficiently detect the alterations in the digital image. Splicing forgery is commonly used to conceal the reality in images. Splicing introduces high contrast in the corners, smooth regions, and edges. We proposed a novel image forgery detection technique based on image splicing using Discrete Wavelet Transform and histograms of discriminative robust local binary patterns. First, a given color image is transformed in YCbCr color space and then Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT) is applied on Cb and Cr components of the digital image. Texture variation in each subband of DWT is described using the dominant rotated local binary patterns (DRLBP). The DRLBP from each subband are concatenated to produce the final feature vector. Finally, a support vector machine is used to develop image forgery detection model. The performance and generalization of the proposed technique were evaluated on publicly available benchmark datasets. The proposed technique outperformed the state-of-the-art forgery detection techniques with 98.95% detection accuracy.