An IEEE Signal Processing Society sponsored a Guest lecture by Dr. Alex Kot, Professor, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore was organized by IIIT, Delhi on 29th July 2015. Four students of Information Technology Department and Seven students of Electronics and Computer Engineering Department from Dronacharya College of Engineering, Gurgaon, attended the event.

The technical session by Dr. Kot started with an introduction of “Image Forensics: is a photo worth a thousand word”. He progressed the lecture by providing the basic knowledge about image forensics, the power of forensic photography, effective case preparation, challenges and introduces several techniques used for image forensics. He discussed about fast proliferation of digital cameras and other image acquisition devices and the advancement in digital photography technology. He said that it is a big challenge to authenticate the photo contents from the public, which may come from unreliable sources. A large variety of forensics works have been proposed to address various forensic challenges based on different types of tell-tale signs. This talk introduced several techniques for:

(1) Accurate detection of image demos icing regularity as a general type of image forensics features.

(2) Identification of various common image source models including digital still cameras, RAW conversion tools and the low-end mobile cameras

(3) Universal detection of a wide range of common image tampering.

(4) Tampering detection for blur images.

(5) EXIF file tampering or content manipulations,

(6) Tempering detection with blur images, and

(7) Prevention of the image recapturing threat.

These techniques help expose common image forgeries, especially those easy-to-make forgeries, which can be hardly seen directly by human eyes. The common theme behind these forensics techniques is through statistical detection of some intrinsic image regularity or tampering anomalies.

He presented a meaningful engagement with the subject material. It created an intrinsic interest amongst the participants therefore it had a deeper educational benefit.