Authentication and access control in the JPEG 2000 compressed domain

Transmission and exchange of digital images with friends and customers is become a very simple task thanks to the development of the communication networks and the tools built around them. Unfortunately, such operations become delicate whenever image security is required, typically for commercial applications or protection of proprietary data. Solutions associated to data encryption already exist but are usually complex and do not take into account the specificities of images, generally under a compressed form. The Joint Photographic Experts group has recently created a new still image coding standard called JPEG 2000. It presents an efficient compression scheme together with support of functionalities required by today and tomorrow applications (progressive decoding, region of interest...). xBy considering the JPEG 2000 algorithm, we are presenting tools for image authentication or access control (on image resolutions and qualities). These techniques can be applied on JPEG 2000 codestreams or directly integrated into the coding/decoding operations, and are mainly based on modification and insertion of information in the bit stream. The resulting codestreams remain compliant with the standard. Moreover, they allow image side information retrieval and/or prevent use by unauthorized parties.