Secure and Reliable Image Management using Watermarking

In this Phase I SBIR research, MRC proposes to develop new information protection andassurance technology based on robust and fragile digital watermarking. In particular,we will develop secure image authentication and integrity verificationtechniquescapable of localizing changes in images and estimating the extent of the modifications.The techniques will be compatible with the public key encryption infrastructure andwill enable convenient secure distribution of imagry between all militarysubjectsincluding mobile battlefield agents. Also, a new class of self-embedding techniqueswill be developed that will enable images to repair themselves after intentional orunintentional damage. Such smart images will significantly increase the securityandreliability of data transmission from and to agents in the battlefield. We furtherpropose a class of robust watermarking techniques that can be combined with the fragile authentication watermarks to build hybrid watermarking schemes capableofdistinguishing innocent (or allowed) changes including lossy compression or imageenhancement, from malicious changes, such as feature removal or adding. Finally, allproposed watermarking techniques will be flexible, expandable, applicable to allimageformats, and compatible with all existing and future battlefield agents. Thewatermarking algorithms will be implemented in a software product running on Windows95/98/2000/NT platforms.Cryptographically secure fragile authentication techniques, hybridwatermarkingschemes, and self-embedding techniques have important applications in a variety ofcommercial areas, including trusted imagery in court, secure hardware/image links,intelligent imagery, and secure image author/image links. Companies that dealwithencryption, intellectual property protection, multimedia, internet commerce,steganography, and general imagery could all benefit from development of the proposedtechnologies. The authentication algorithms developed from this research could alsobeimplemented directly in the hardware of secure surveillance digital cameras andvideo-cameras.