We explore the effect of dimensionality on the nearest neighbor problem. We show that under a broad set of conditions (much broader than independent and identically distributed dimensions), as dimensionality increases, the distance to the nearest data point approaches the distance to the farthest data point. To provide a practical perspective, we present empirical results on both real and synthetic data sets that demonstrate that this effect can occur for as few as 10-15 dimensions. These results should not be interpreted to mean that high-dimensional indexing is never meaningful; we illustrate this point by identifying some high-dimensional workloads for which this effect does not occur. However, our results do emphasize that the methodology used almost universally in the database literature to evaluate high-dimensional indexing techniques is flawed, and should be modified. In particular, most such techniques proposed in the literature are not evaluated versus simple linear scan, and are evaluated over workloads for which nearest neighbor is not meaningful. Often, even the reported experiments, when analyzed carefully, show that linear scan would outperform the techniques being proposed on the workloads studied in high (10-15) dimensionality!.

When is nearest neighbor meaningful

In this paper, we propose a scheme to detect the copy-move forgery in an image, mainly by extracting the keypoints for comparison. The main difference to the traditional methods is that the proposed scheme first segments the test image into semantically independent patches prior to keypoint extraction. As a result, the copy-move regions can be detected by matching between these patches. The matching process consists of two stages. In the first stage, we find the suspicious pairs of patches that may contain copy-move forgery regions, and we roughly estimate an affine transform matrix. In the second stage, an Expectation-Maximization-based algorithm is designed to refine the estimated matrix and to confirm the existence of copy-move forgery. Experimental results prove the good performance of the proposed scheme via comparing it with the state-of-the-art schemes on the public databases.

Segmentation-Based Image Copy-Move Forgery Detection Scheme

Digital forensics is a relatively new research area which aims at authenticating digital media by detecting possible digital forgeries. Indeed, the ever increasing availability of multimedia data on the web, coupled with the great advances reached by computer graphical tools, makes the modification of an image and the creation of visually compelling forgeries an easy task for any user. This in turns creates the need of reliable tools to validate the trustworthiness of the represented information. In such a context, we present here RAISE, a large dataset of 8156 high-resolution raw images, depicting various subjects and scenarios, properly annotated and available together with accompanying metadata. Such a wide collection of untouched and diverse data is intended to become a powerful resource for, but not limited to, forensic researchers by providing a common benchmark for a fair comparison, testing and evaluation of existing and next generation forensic algorithms. In this paper we describe how RAISE has been collected and organized, discuss how digital image forensics and many other multimedia research areas may benefit of this new publicly available benchmark dataset and test a very recent forensic technique for JPEG compression detection.

RAISE: a raw images dataset for digital image forensics

We propose a new algorithm for the accurate detection and localization of copy–move forgeries, based on rotation-invariant features computed densely on the image. Dense-field techniques proposed in the literature guarantee a superior performance with respect to their keypoint-based counterparts, at the price of a much higher processing time, mostly due to the feature matching phase. To overcome this limitation, we resort here to a fast approximate nearest-neighbor search algorithm, PatchMatch, especially suited for the computation of dense fields over images. We adapt the matching algorithm to deal efficiently with invariant features, so as to achieve higher robustness with respect to rotations and scale changes. Moreover, leveraging on the smoothness of the output field, we implement a simplified and reliable postprocessing procedure. The experimental analysis, conducted on databases available online, proves the proposed technique to be at least as accurate, generally more robust, and typically much faster than the state-of-the-art dense-field references.

Efficient Dense-Field Copy–Move Forgery Detection

During the last decade, many variants of the original particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm have been proposed. In many cases, the difference between two variants can be seen as an algorithmic component being present in one variant but not in the other. In the first part of the paper, we present the results and insights obtained from a detailed empirical study of several PSO variants from a component difference point of view. In the second part of the paper, we propose a new PSO algorithm that combines a number of algorithmic components that showed distinct advantages in the experimental study concerning optimization speed and reliability. We call this composite algorithm Frankenstein's PSO in an analogy to the popular character of Mary Shelley's novel. Frankenstein's PSO performance evaluation shows that by integrating components in novel ways effective optimizers can be designed.

/pdf/frankenstein-s-pso-a-composite-particle-swarm-optimization-1zbcz3z0c4.pdf

Frankenstein's PSO: A Composite Particle Swarm Optimization Algorithm

A copy-move forgery is created by copying and pasting content within the same image, and potentially postprocessing it. In recent years, the detection of copy-move forgeries has become one of the most actively researched topics in blind image forensics. A considerable number of different algorithms have been proposed focusing on different types of postprocessed copies. In this paper, we aim to answer which copy-move forgery detection algorithms and processing steps (e.g., matching, filtering, outlier detection, affine transformation estimation) perform best in various postprocessing scenarios. The focus of our analysis is to evaluate the performance of previously proposed feature sets. We achieve this by casting existing algorithms in a common pipeline. In this paper, we examined the 15 most prominent feature sets. We analyzed the detection performance on a per-image basis and on a per-pixel basis. We created a challenging real-world copy-move dataset, and a software framework for systematic image manipulation. Experiments show, that the keypoint-based features Sift and Surf, as well as the block-based DCT, DWT, KPCA, PCA, and Zernike features perform very well. These feature sets exhibit the best robustness against various noise sources and downsampling, while reliably identifying the copied regions.

An Evaluation of Popular Copy-Move Forgery Detection Approaches

A copy-move forgery is created by copying and pasting content within the same image, and potentially post-processing it. In recent years, the detection of copy-move forgeries has become one of the most actively researched topics in blind image forensics. A considerable number of different algorithms have been proposed focusing on different types of postprocessed copies. In this paper, we aim to answer which copy-move forgery detection algorithms and processing steps (e.g., matching, filtering, outlier detection, affine transformation estimation) perform best in various postprocessing scenarios. The focus of our analysis is to evaluate the performance of previously proposed feature sets. We achieve this by casting existing algorithms in a common pipeline. In this paper, we examined the 15 most prominent feature sets. We analyzed the detection performance on a per-image basis and on a per-pixel basis. We created a challenging real-world copy-move dataset, and a software framework for systematic image manipulation. Experiments show, that the keypoint-based features SIFT and SURF, as well as the block-based DCT, DWT, KPCA, PCA and Zernike features perform very well. These feature sets exhibit the best robustness against various noise sources and downsampling, while reliably identifying the copied regions.

The interaction among particles is a vital aspect of Particle Swarm Optimization. As such, it has a strong influence on the swarm's success. In this study various approaches regarding the particles' communication behavior and their relationship are examined, as well as possibilities to combine the approaches. A new variant of the popular FIPS algorithm, the so-called Ranked FIPS, is introduced, which resolves specific shortcomings of the traditional FIPS. As all tested PSO variants feature distinct strengths and weaknesses, a new adaptive strategy is proposed which operates on dissimiliarly configured subswarms. The exchange between these subswarms is solely based on particle migration. The combination of the Ranked FIPS and other strategies within the so called Particle Swarm Optimizer with Migration achieves a very good, yet remarkably reliable performance over a wide range of recognized benchmark problems.

/pdf/social-interaction-in-particle-swarm-optimization-the-ranked-ym5t5unihz.pdf

Social interaction in particle swarm optimization, the ranked FIPS, and adaptive multi-swarms

Multispectral imaging has been gaining popularity and has been gradually applied to many fields besides remote sensing. Multispectral data provides unique information about material classification and reflectance analysis in general. However, due to the high dimensionality of the data, both human observers as well as computers, have difficulty interpreting this wealth of information. We present a new software package that facilitates the visualization of the relationship between spectral and topological information in a novel fashion. It puts emphasis on the spectral gradient, which is shown to provide enhanced information for many reflectance analysis tasks. It also includes a rich toolbox for evaluation of image segmentation and other algorithms in the multispectral domain. We combine the parallel coordinates visualization technique with hashing for a highly interactive visual connection between spectral distribution, spectral gradient and topology. The framework is released as open-source, has a modern cross-platform design and is well integrated into existing established computer vision software (OpenCV).

http://www5.informatik.uni-erlangen.de/Forschung/Publikationen/2010/Jordan10-GAN.pdf

Gerbil-A Novel Software Framework for Visualization and Analysis in the Multispectral Domain

We propose a new method for performing edge detection in multi-spectral images based on the self-organizing map (SOM) concept. Previously, 1-dimensional or 2-dimensional SOMs were trained to provide a linear mapping of high-dimensional multispectral vectors. Then, edge detection was applied on that mapping. However, the 1-dimensional SOM may not converge on a suitable global order for images with rich content. Likewise, the 2-dimensional SOM introduces false edges due to linearization artifacts. Our method feeds the edge detector without linearization. Instead, it exploits directly the distances of SOM neurons. This avoids the aforementioned drawbacks and is more general, as a SOM of arbitrary dimensionality can be used. We show that our method achieves significantly better edge detection results than previous work on a high-resolution multispectral image database.

/pdf/edge-detection-in-multispectral-images-using-the-n-2mtupd2y0j.pdf

Johannes Jordan

Papers

An Evaluation of Popular Copy-Move Forgery Detection Approaches

An Evaluation of Popular Copy-Move Forgery Detection Approaches

Social interaction in particle swarm optimization, the ranked FIPS, and adaptive multi-swarms

Gerbil-A Novel Software Framework for Visualization and Analysis in the Multispectral Domain

Edge detection in multispectral images using the n-dimensional self-organizing map