Modified SIFT-Based Kirsch Edge Detection Approach for Copy-Move Forgery Detection

The increasing accessibility of digital imaging technology has led to a rise in image forgery, raising concerns about digital content authenticity in forensic and security domains. Copy-move forgery is one the most prevalent and challenging forgery techniques due to its seamless manipulation. We propose a novel passive CMFD (CMFD) approach that leverages a modified Kirsch (mKirsch) edge detector and a modified SIFT-based descriptor (DivSIFT) to accurately identify and localize copy-move forgery (CMF). The mKirsch edge detector enhances edge detection by selectively deleting specific masks, improving keypoint extraction and feature matching. We used MICC-F220, CoMoFoD, and MICC-F8Multi datasets to measure the performance of the new method, under challenging conditions such as rotation, scaling, JPEG compression, and multiple forgeries. The results show that mKirsch-enhanced detection outperforms compared to conventional Kirsch-based methods. Notably, methods with deleted masks (WW_NW and NE_SE) achieved a True Positive Rate (TPR) of 90.91%, precision 100%, and an F-measure of 95.24%. Robust against rotation and scaling attacks, achieving a TPR of up to 96.97% with zero false positives. Additionally, the method is computationally efficient, with an execution time of 2.74 seconds, making it suitable for real-world applications. These findings establish the mKirsch-based CMFD as a highly accurate and efficient solution for image forgery detection in digital images.