![]()
In our world of digital information, everything is described by zeros and ones, even photographs. And it's incredibly easy to use software like Photoshop to alter an image after it is digitized to produce fake ones. Now, computer scientists from Dartmouth College have developed an algorithm able to tell the difference between a "real" image and a modified one. They "built a statistical model that captures the mathematical regularities inherent in natural images. Because these statistics fundamentally change when images are altered, the model can be used to detect digital tampering." The team thinks that their technology, or a similar one, will soon be incorporated in the U.S. legal system to authenticate images.
Dartmouth News July 1, 2004