Block-based image hashing with restricted blocking strategy for rotational robustness

Image hashing is a potential solution for image content authentication (a desired image hashing algorithm should be robust to common image processing operations and various geometric distortions). In the literature, researchers pay more attention to block-based image hashing algorithms due to their robustness to common image processing operations (such as lossy compression, low-pass filtering, and additive noise). However, the block-based hashing strategies are sensitive to rotation processing operations. This indicates that the robustness of the blockbased hashing methods against rotation operations is an important issue. Towards this direction, in this article we propose a restricted blocking strategy by investigating effect of two rotation operations on an image and its blocks in both theoretical and experimental ways. Furthermore, we apply the proposed blocking strategy for the recently reported non-negative matrix factorization (NMF) hashing. Experimental results have demonstrated the validity of the block-based hashing algorithms with restricted blocking strategy for rotation operations.