A security-based visual information retrieval scheme

This paper presents a novel idea of combining the content-based image retrieval (CBIR) and concept of security together into the traditional CBIR systems, and a sample system based on digital watermarking can be built for special grade queries. Using this kind of digital watermarking-based systems, the administrators, high-level users, middle-level users and low-level users may retrieve different results under the same query image, because dissimilar digital information has been embedded in the images as digital watermarks. We build a test bed (as a simple sample only) on 56,600 images, and parts of them are watermarked. The experimental result shows our algorithms work well for image database security, while it can be extended for copyright protection in visual information retrieval systems and data packet filters in the network.