Copy-move image forgery detection based on evolving circular domains coverage

The aim of this paper is to improve the accuracy of copy-move forgery detection (CMFD) in image forensics by proposing a novel scheme and the main contribution is evolving circular domains coverage (ECDC) algorithm. The proposed scheme integrates both block-based and keypoint-based forgery detection methods. Firstly, the speed-up robust feature (SURF) in log-polar space and the scale invariant feature transform (SIFT) are extracted from an entire image. Secondly, generalized 2 nearest neighbor (g2NN) is employed to get massive matched pairs. Then, random sample consensus (RANSAC) algorithm is employed to filter out mismatched pairs, thus allowing rough localization of counterfeit areas. To present these forgery areas more accurately, we propose the efficient and accurate ECDC algorithm to present them. This algorithm can find satisfactory threshold areas by extracting block features from jointly evolving circular domains, which are centered on matched pairs. Finally, morphological operation is applied to refine the detected forgery areas. Experimental results indicate that the proposed CMFD scheme can achieve better detection performance under various attacks compared with other state-of-the-art CMFD schemes.Published versionThis work was supported in part by the Shandong Provincial Natural Science Foundation, China (Nos. ZR2021MF060, ZR2017MF020), in part by the Education and Teaching Reform Research Project of Shandong University, Weihai (No. Y2021054), in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 61702303), in part by the Science and Technology Development Plan Project of Weihai Municipality in 2020, and in part by the 14th Student Research Training Program (SRTP) at Shandong University, Weihai (No. A19167)