Abstract
When it comes to reducing impulsive noise from digital photos, the Median Filter (MF) is a nonlinear filter that can be employed effectively. This nonlinear filter is used to erase traces left by other linear filters due to the fact that they are nonlinear in nature. The application of a median filter on an image raises questions about the image’s genuineness when it is discovered. For the detection of median filtering, a slew of approaches has been developed. The main purpose of this paper is to explain different parts of median filter forensics, look at some new and existing techniques in median filter forensics, and compare the pros and cons of each technique. We also developed a taxonomy to broadly classify various methods proposed for median filter forensics. In addition, we also discussed and describe the popular testing procedure that researchers in the field are using to evaluate the median filtering detection methods and may be employed as a testing framework for future studies, for other operator detection as well as for general purpose image forensics.
Similar content being viewed by others
Data availability
Data sharing not applicable to this article as no datasets were generated or analysed during the current study.
References
Agarwal S, Jung K-H (2021) Hsb-spam: An efficient image filtering detection technique. Appl Sci 11(9) https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3417/11/9/3749
Agarwal S, Chand S, Skarbnik N (2016) SPAM revisited for median filtering detection using higher-order difference. Secur Commun Netw 9:4089–4102. https://doi.org/10.1002/sec.1590
Ahmed S, Islam S (2016) Median filtering detection using variation of neighboring line pairs for image forensics. J Electron Imaging 25(5):1–13. https://doi.org/10.1117/1.JEI.25.5.053039
Ahmed S, Islam S (2018) Median filter detection through streak area analysis. Digit Inv 26:100–106 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1742287617303109
Bas P, Furon T (2010) “Bows-2 break our watermarking system (july 2007) [2007-07-10],” [Online]. Available: http://bows2.ec-lille.fr/
Bas P, Furon T (2016) The first IEEE-IFS-TC image forensics challenge, [Online]. Available: http://ifc.recod.ic.unicamp.br/fc.website/index.py. Accessed 03 Mar 2020
Bayar B, Stamm MC (2016) “A deep learning approach to universal image manipulation detection using a new convolutional layer,” in Proceedings of the 4th ACM Workshop on Information Hiding and Multimedia Security, ser. IH;MMSec ‘16. New York, NY, USA: Association for Computing Machinery, p. 5–10. [Online]. Available: https://doi.org/10.1145/2909827.2930786
Bayar B, Stamm MC (2018) Constrained convolutional neural networks: a new approach towards general purpose image manipulation detection. IEEE Trans Inf Forensics Sec 13(11):2691–2706. https://doi.org/10.1109/TIFS.2018.2825953
Bovik AC (1987) Streaking in median filtered images. IEEE Trans Acoust Speech Signal Process ASSP-35(4):181–194
Cao G, Zhao Y, Ni R, Yu L, Tian H (2010) “Forensic detection of median filtering in digital images,” IEEE International Conference on Multimedia and Expo (ICME), pp. 89–94
Chen C, Ni J (2012) Median filtering detection using edge based prediction matrix. In: Shi YQ, Kim HJ, Perez-Gonzalez F (eds) Digital Forensics and Watermarking. IWDW 2011. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 7128. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-32205-1_29
Chen C, Ni J, Huang J (2013) Blind detection of median filtering in digital images: A difference domain based approach. IEEE Trans Image Process 22(12):4699–4710 software available at. [Online]. Available: https: //github.com/ChenglongChen/GLF Featuresfor Median Filtering Forensics
Chen J, Kang X, Liu Y, Wang ZJ (Nov 2015) Median filtering forensics based on convolutional neural networks. IEEE Signal Process Lett 22(11):1849–1853
Chuang W, Swaminathan A, Wu M (2009) “Tampering identification using empirical frequency response,” in 2009 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing, pp. 1517–1520
Dang-Nguyen D-T, Pasquini C, Conotter V, Boato G (2015) “Raise: A raw images dataset for digital image forensics,” in Proceedings of the 6th ACM Multimedia Systems Conference, ser. MMSys 15. New York, NY, USA: Association for Computing Machinery, pp. 219–224. [Online]. Available: https://doi.org/10.1145/2713168.2713194
H. Farid, “Digital doctoring: how to tell the real from the fake,” Significance, vol. 3, no. 4, pp. 162–166, 2006. Available: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1740-9713.2006.00197.x
Filler T, Pevný T, Craver S, Ker A (eds) (2011) Information Hiding. IH 2011. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 6958. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-24178-9_5
Gallagher N, Wise G (1981) A theoretical analysis of the properties of median filters. IEEE Trans Acoust Speech Signal Process 29(6):1136–1141
Gao H, Gao T (2020) Detection of median filtering based on ARMA model and pixel-pair histogram feature of difference image. Multimed Tools Appl 79:12551–12567. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-019-08340-3
Gao H, Hu M, Gao T, Cheng R (2019) Robust detection of median filtering based on combined features of difference image. Signal Process Image Commun 72:126–133 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0923596518308464
Gloe T, Bohme R (2010) The Dresden image database for benchmarking digital image forensics. J Digit Forensic Pract 3(2–4):150–159
Gorecki T, Undefineduczak M (2013) Linear discriminant analysis with a generalization of the moore-penrose pseudoinverse. Int J Appl Math Comput Sci 23(2):463–471. https://doi.org/10.2478/amcs-2013-0035
Gui X, Li X, Qi W, Yang B (2014) “Blind median filtering detection based on histogram features,” Asia-Pacific Signal and Information Processing Association, 2014 Annual Summit and Conference (APSIPA), pp. 1–4
Gupta A, Singhal D (2018) Analytical Global Median Filtering Forensics Based on Moment Histograms. ACM Trans Multimed Comput Commun Appl 14(2):1–23 http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=3210458.3176650
He K, Zhang X, Ren S, Sun J (2016) Deep residual learning for image recognition. In: 2016 IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), Las Vegas, pp 770–778. https://doi.org/10.1109/CVPR.2016.90
Jain H, Das J, Verma HK, Khanna N (2017) An enhanced statistical approach for median filtering detection using difference image. In: 2017 IEEE International Conference on Identity, Security and Behavior Analysis (ISBA), New Delhi, pp 1–7. https://doi.org/10.1109/ISBA.2017.7947704
Jin X, Jing P, Su Y (2018) AMFNet: an adversarial network for median filtering detection. IEEE Access 6:50459–50467. https://doi.org/10.1109/ACCESS.2018.2867370
B. I. Justusson, Median Filtering: Statistical Properties. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 1981, pp. 161–196. Available: https://doi.org/10.1007/BFb0057597
Kang X, Stamm MC, Peng A, Liu KJR (2012) “Robust median filtering forensics based on the autoregressive model of median filtered residual,” in Proceedings of The 2012 Asia Pacific Signal and Information Processing Association Annual Summit and Conference, pp. 1–9
Kang X, Stamm MC, Peng A, Liu KJR (Sept 2013) Robust median filtering forensics using an autoregressive model. IEEE Trans Inf Forensic Secur 8(9):1456–1468
Ke Y, Qin F, Min W, Zhang Q (2015) An efficient blind detection algorithm of median filtered image. Int J Hybrid Inf Technol 8(1):181–192
Kirchner M, Bohme R (2008) Hiding traces of resampling in digital images. IEEE Trans Inf Forensic Secur 3(4):582–592
Kirchner M, Fridrich J (2010) On detection of median filtering in digital images. IS&T/SPIE Electron Imaging:754110–754110
Li H, Luo W, Qiu X, Huang J (2016) “Identification of various image operations using residual-based features,” IEEE Transact Circ Syst Vid Technol
Li W, Ni R, Li X et al (2019) Robust median filtering detection based on the difference of frequency residuals. Multimed Tools Appl 78:8363–8381. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-018-6831-6
Liao G-Y, Nodes T, Gallagher N (1985) “Output distributions of two-dimensional median filters,” IEEE Trans Acoust Speech Signal Process, pp. 1280–1295
Liu A, Zhao Z, Zhang C, Su Y (2017) Median filtering forensics in digital images based on frequency-domain features. Multimed Tools Appl 76(21):22119–22132
Mazumdar A, Singh J, Tomar Y. S, Bora PK (2018) “Universal image manipulation detection using deep siamese convolutional neural network,” arXiv preprint arXiv:1808.06323
Ng TT, Chang SF, Sun Q (2004) A data set of authentic and spliced image blocks. Columbia University, ADVENT Technical Report #203-2004-3
Niu Y, Zhao Y, Ni R (2017) Robust median filtering detection based on local difference descriptor. Signal Process Image Commun 53:65–72
Nodes T, Liao G, Gallagher N (1984) “Statistical analysis of two dimensional median filtered images,” in ICASSP ‘84. IEEE Int Conf Acoust Speech Signal Process, vol. 9, pp. 255–258
NRCS, U (2014) Natural resources conservation service photo gallery. United States Department of aAgriculture, Washington, DC
Pasquini C, Boato G, Alajlan N, De Natale FGB (2016) A deterministic approach to detect median filtering in 1d data. IEEE Trans Inf Forensics Secur 11(7):1425–1437
Pevny T, Bas P, Fridrich JJ (2010) Steganalysis by subtractive pixel adjacency matrix. IEEE Trans Inf Forensic Secur 5(2):215–224
Piva A (2013) “An overview on image forensics”, ISRN Signal Processing, Hindawi Publishing Corporation, p. 22
Popescu A, Farid H (2005) Exposing digital forgeries by detecting traces of resampling. IEEE Trans Signal Process 53(2):758–767
Qureshi MA, Deriche M (2015) A bibliography of pixel-based blind image forgery detection techniques. Signal Process Image Commun 39:46–74 Available: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0923596515001393
Rabiner L, Sambur M, Schmidt C (1975) Applications of a nonlinear smoothing algorithm to speech processing. IEEE Trans Acoust Speech Signal Process 23(6):552–557
Rhee KH (2015) “Median filtering detection using variation of neighboring line pairs for image forensic,” in Consumer Electronics-Berlin (ICCE-Berlin), 2015 IEEE 5th International Conference on. IEEE, pp. 103–107
Rhee KH (2019) Forensic detection using bit-planes slicing of median filtering image. IEEE Access 7:92586–92597
Rhee KH (2019) Improvement feature vector: autoregressive model of median filter residual. IEEE Access 7:77524–77540
Russakovsky O, Deng J, Su H, Krause J, Satheesh S, Ma S, … Fei-Fei L (2015) Imagenet large scale visual recognition challenge. Int J Comput Vis 115(3):211–252
Schaefer G, Stich M (2003) UCID: an uncompressed color image database. In: Proc. SPIE 5307, Storage and Retrieval Methods and Applications for Multimedia 2004, pp 472-480. https://doi.org/10.1117/12.525375
Stamm MC, Wu M, Liu KJR (2013) Information forensics: an overview of the first decade. IEEE Access 1:167–200
Swaminathan A, Wu M, Liu KJR (2008) Digital image forensics via intrinsic fingerprints. IEEE Trans Inf Forensic Secur 3(1):101–117
Tan X, Triggs B (2010) Enhanced local texture feature sets for face recognition under difficult lighting conditions. IEEE Trans Image Process 19(6):1635–1650
H. Tang, R. Ni, Y. Zhao, and X. Li, “Median filtering detection of small-size image based on cnn,” J Visual Commun Image Represent, vol. 51, pp. 162–168, 2018. [Online]. Available: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S104732031830018X
Tukey J (1971) Exploratory data analysis. MA: Addison-Wesley
Tyan S (1981) “Median filtering: Deterministic properties,” in Two-Dimensional Digital Signal Prcessing II. Springer, pp. 197–217
Wang D-p, Gao T, Yang F (2018) A forensic algorithm against median filtering based on coefficients of image blocks in frequency domain. Multimed Tools Appl 77(18):23411–23427. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-018-5651-z
J. Wang, Q. Ni, Y. Zhang, X. Luo, Y. Shi, J. Zhai, and S. K. Jha, “Median filtering detection based on quaternion convolutional neural network,” Comput Mater Continua, vol. 65, no. 1, pp. 929–943, 2020. [Online]. Available: http://www.techscience.com/cmc/v65n1/39604
Wu R, Li X, Yang B (2011) Identifying computer generated graphics via histogram features. In: 2011 18th IEEE International Conference on Image Processing, pp 1933–1936. https://doi.org/10.1109/ICIP.2011.6115849
Yang J, Ren H, Zhu G, Huang J, Shi Y-Q (2018) Detecting median filtering via two-dimensional AR models of multiple filtered residuals. Multimed Tools Appl 77(7):7931–7953. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-017-4691-0
Yang L, Yang P, Ni R, Zhao Y (2020) Xception-based general forensic method on small-size images. In: Pan J-S, Li J, Tsai P-W, Jain LC (eds) Advances in intelligent information hiding and multimedia signal processing. Springer Singapore, Singapore, pp 361–369
Yu L, Zhang Y, Han H, Zhang L, Wu F (2019) Robust median filtering forensics by cnn-based multiple residuals learning. IEEE Access 7:120594–120602
Yuan H-D (2011) Blind forensics of median filtering in digital images. IEEE Trans Inf Forensics Secur 6(4):1335–1345. https://doi.org/10.1109/TIFS.2011.2161761
Zhang Y, Li S, Wang S, Shi YQ (2014) Revealing the traces of median filtering using high-order local ternary patterns. IEEE Signal Process Lett 21(3):275–279
Zhang J, Liao Y, Zhu X, Wang H, Ding J (2020) A deep learning approach in the discrete cosine transform domain to median filtering forensics. IEEE Signal Process Lett 27:276–280
Zhu BB, Swanson MD, Tewfik AH (2004) When seeing isn’t believing [multimedia authentication technologies]. IEEE Signal Process Mag 21(2):40–49
Zhu T, Gu H, Chen Z (2022) A median filtering forensics CNN approach based on local binary pattern. In: Liu Q, Liu X, Chen B, Zhang Y, Peng J (eds) Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Computer Engineering and Networks. Lecture Notes in Electrical Engineering, vol 808. Springer, Singapore, pp 258-266. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-6554-7_30
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Competing interests
The authors have no relevant financial or non-financial interests to disclose.
Additional information
Publisher’s note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.
About this article
Cite this article
Ahmed, S., Islam, S. Methods in detection of median filtering in digital images: a survey. Multimed Tools Appl 82, 43945–43965 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-023-14835-x
Received:
Revised:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-023-14835-x