Int J Comput Vis (2011) 92: 71–91 DOI 10.1007/s11263-010-0403-1 Digital Image Forgery Detection Based on Lens and Sensor Aberration Ido Yerushalmy · Hagit Hel-Or Received: 31 August 2009 / Accepted: 21 October 2010 / Published online: 6 November 2010 © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2010 Abstract A new approach to detecting forgery in digital photographs is suggested. The method does not necessitate adding data to the image (such as a Digital Watermark) nor require other images for comparison or training. The fun- damental assumption in the presented approach is the no- tion that image features arising from the image acquisition process itself or due to the physical structure and character- istics of digital cameras, are inherent proof of authenticity and they are sensitive to image manipulation as well as being difficult to forge synthetically. Typically, such features do not affect image content nor quality and are often invisible to the inexperienced eye. The approach presented in this work is based on the effects introduced in the acquired image by the optical and sensing systems of the camera. Specifically, it exploits image artifacts that are due to chromatic aberra- tions as indicators for evaluating image authenticity. Keywords Image forgery · Camera based forgery detection · Chromatic aberration · Lens artifacts · Purple blooming · Lateral chromatic aberration 1 Introduction Digital photography produces images that can be easily edited using simple and widely accessible software. Along I. Yerushalmy · H. Hel-Or () Department of Computer Science, University of Haifa, Mount Carmel, Haifa, Israel e-mail: hagit@cs.haifa.ac.il I. Yerushalmy e-mail: ido.yerushalmy@gmail.com with images acquired by digital cameras, the field of Com- puter Graphics enables the generation of highly realistic im- ages. This progress allows not only the enhancement of pho- tographs or generation of realistic animations, but unfortu- nately also the creation of forged images. This has reduced the reliability of digital images and escalated copyrights issues—leading to the necessity of image authentication. Digital Watermarks (Wolfgang and Delp 1996) enable verification of authenticity of an image. However, it re- quires special processing at the time of acquisition as well as when image authenticity is tested. This work suggests a new method of testing whether an image has been forged or tampered. The method does not necessitate adding data to the image (such as a Digital Watermark) nor require other images for comparison. The fundamental assumption in the presented approach is the notion that image features arising from the image acquisition process itself or due to the phys- ical structure and characteristics of digital cameras, are in- herent indicators of authenticity and they are sensitive to im- age manipulation as well as being difficult to forge synthet- ically. Typically, such features do not affect image content nor quality and are often invisible to the inexperienced eye. The approach presented in this work is based on the effects introduced in the acquired image by the optical and sensing systems of the camera. Specifically, it exploits image arti- facts that are due to chromatic aberrations, as indicators for evaluating image authenticity. Chromatic aberrations in dig- ital images arise from physical and optical sources during the image acquisition process. A plethora of aberrations in- termix to produce chromatic (and spatial) artifacts that are barely perceived and often disregarded by the naive observer (see Sect. 3). Yet these effects may serve as authenticity in- dicators as they are subtle, difficult to reproduce artificially and abundantly common in digital images ranging from sim- ple every-day cameras to high-end cameras and professional