Secure Self-Recovery Image Authentication Using Randomly-Sized Blocks

In this paper, a secure variable-size block-based image authentication technique is proposed that can not only localize the alteration detection but also recover the missing data. An image undergoes recursive arbitrarily-asymmetric binary tree partitioning to obtain randomly-sized blocks spanning the entire image. To enhance reliability of altered block recovery, multiple description coding (MDC) is utilized to generate two block descriptions. Block signature copies and the two block descriptions are embedded into two relatively-distant blocks making a doubly linked chain. The experimental results deposit that the proposed technique successfully both localizes and compensates the alterations. Furthermore, it is robust against the vector quantization (VQ) attack.