A novel image authentication scheme based on contourlets and error control coding

In this paper, we propose a novel approach which takes advantage of a redundant contourlet transform to extract invariant image features and generate content-based image signatures for authentication purpose. We also describe the process of incorporating error control coding as a means for achieving semi-fragile authentication. Several experiments are performed to demonstrate the effectiveness of our technique in authenticating images under acceptable manipulations (noise addition, JPEG compression) while detecting malicious image alterations.