SAE based unified double JPEG compression detection system for Web image forensics

Abstract

Purpose

Recently, the double joint photographic experts group (JPEG) compression detection tasks have been paid much more attention in the field of Web image forensics. Although there are several useful methods proposed for double JPEG compression detection when the quantization matrices are different in the primary and secondary compression processes, it is still a difficult problem when the quantization matrices are the same. Moreover, those methods for the different or the same quantization matrices are implemented in independent ways. The paper aims to build a new unified framework for detecting the doubly JPEG compression.

Design/methodology/approach

First, the Y channel of JPEG images is cut into 8 × 8 nonoverlapping blocks, and two groups of features that characterize the artifacts caused by doubly JPEG compression with the same and the different quantization matrices are extracted on those blocks. Then, the Riemannian manifold learning is applied for dimensionality reduction while preserving the local intrinsic structure of the features. Finally, a deep stack autoencoder network with seven layers is designed to detect the doubly JPEG compression.

Findings

Experimental results with different quality factors have shown that the proposed approach performs much better than the state-of-the-art approaches.

Practical implications

To verify the integrity and authenticity of Web images, the research of double JPEG compression detection is increasingly paid more attentions.

Originality/value

This paper aims to propose a unified framework to detect the double JPEG compression in the scenario whether the quantization matrix is different or not, which means this approach can be applied in more practical Web forensics tasks.

Citation

Wang, Z., Zuo, C. and Zeng, C. (2021), "SAE based unified double JPEG compression detection system for Web image forensics", International Journal of Web Information Systems, Vol. 17 No. 2, pp. 84-98. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJWIS-11-2020-0073