An Optimized Content-Aware Authentication Scheme for Streaming JPEG-2000 Images Over Lossy Networks

In this paper, we propose an optimized content-aware authentication scheme for JPEG-2000 streams over lossy networks, where a received packet is consumed only when it is both decodable and authentic. In a JPEG-2000 codestream some packets are more important than others in terms of coding dependency and visual quality. This inspires us to allocate more redundant authentication information for the more important packets to minimize the distortion of the authenticated image at the receiver. In other words, with the awareness of image content, we formulate an optimization framework, which is able to build an authentication graph yielding the best visual quality at the receiver, given a specific authentication overhead and network condition. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed scheme achieved our design goals in that the R-D curve of an authenticated image is very close to its original one where no authentication is applied