Spring 2007   InfAs 535

Steganography, Watermarking & Steganalysis

Project Topics and Formats

Project Timeline Due Dates

The project is broken into several smaller pieces, each of which will be graded:

1. Due Thursday Mar. 13.  2-3 page description of project. Can use an expanded outline format, single spaced, single column.  Expand on the topic you/we selected from the email response to your first project assignment.  Put more detail in on the topic.  Send as a document (word or pdf).

2. Due Friday Feb. 22.  Project topics list.   Please email me your list.

   Here I would like a list of 2-4 possible topics that you may want to do your project on.  I would like a paragraph description of each possible topic.  Be as specific as possible. I will reply to each email with suggestions.

3. Here is a link to descriptions of projects completed in previous semesters.  I do not discourage doing a project similar to ones done in previous semesters.  You do, of course, have to do your own work.

Projects.

Each student will be assigned a project whose topic is of interest to the student and related to the class content.  The latitude for the project is broad and will be an exploratory effort on the part of the student.  The project topic for each student will be chosen by spring break.  Examples of projects include:

1. Part of your thesis or dissertation (adapted in scope for this class);

2. A paper review;

3. A detailed summary and overview of a certain topic appearing in journal and conference papers, such as spread spectrum techniques, or business applications of watermarking, or comparisons of available software;

4. A proposal for funded research;

5. An application of a technique or algorithm to specific data where code is written to implement the algorithm.  There is source code available from Cox's book that you may use in lieu of writing your own code.  However, please make sure that you read the disclaimer and requirements for using it before downloading any code.  I have reprinted it below for your convenience.

   Disclaimer

   Information provided in this document is provided "as is" without warranty of any kind, either express or implied. Every effort has been made to ensure accuracy and conformance to standards accepted at the time of publication. The reader is advised to research other sources of information on these topics.

   The user assumes the entire risk as to the accuracy and the use of this document. This document may be copied and distributed subject to the following conditions:

   1. All text must be copied without modification and all pages must be included;
   2. All copies must contain copyright notice and any other notices provided therein; and
   3. This document may not be distributed for profit. All trademarks acknowledged.

Source Code from Cox's book

Source code for the examples in the book (.txt file)

Jeffrey Bloom's Watermarking Glossary (Coming Soon)

• source_code.txt (179KB Text Document)

Project Topics

Here is a list of project topics.  Projects are not limited to these topics.

1. Investigating information strategies such as described in Information Technology Strategies:  How Leading Firms use IT to Gain an Advantage, by William V. Rapp, the New Jersey Institute of Technology, Oxford University Press, 2002), and discovering or creating connections between these and watermarking and/or steganography applications.

2. Do an investigation into current use of watermarking technologies in practical applications, such as for personnel identification, driver's licenses; music copying; DVD copying, etc.  I may be able to get a driver's license from Digimarc for someone to use for a project.

3. Do an investigation of current cases before courts involving the DMCA.

4. Do a survey of a class of data hiding techniques, limited or not to either  steganography or watermarking involving the techniques below, OR  create your own embedding algorithm, using

   1. DCT for watermarking;

   2. DFT for steganography;

   3. DWT for watermarking and steganography;

   4. perceptual models; spread spectrum;

   5. watermarking audio data; watermarking video data;

   6. watermarking musical scores.

    

5. Do a survey of steganalysis techniques.

6. Do a survey of watermarking techniques invariant to geometric attacks.

7. Pick a paper to follow, and implement a watermarking or steganographic technique on data.  Compare your results with what the paper reported.

FORMAT AND RULES FOR FINAL PROJECT

Format of written report.

The project must be written in journal-paper format (abstract, intro, discussion, summary, references), and all references must be formally cited using the format as appears in journals. The project will be evaluated on

1. organization

2. clarity of presentation

3. conciseness

4. relative content to class topics

5. originality to some extent

There will be several preliminary graded assignments due prior to the report itself.  This includes a description of the project topic, papers to be read and possibly cited in the project, an outline, and several rough drafts.  More details will be given later in class.

IEEE format is required for the final project manuscript.  Here are some examples to follow:

1. Author's Example for IEEE paper (look for the words "Author's Example")
2. How to write an abstract
3. This looks really good

Things that must be included in your project:

1. List of references: what web pages you used, the dates that you used them, magazine and trade publication references, etc.
2. Each project must use at least four references from journals, conferences, or books (excluding the textbook). Good sources of information are the IEEE Communications Magazine, IEEE Signal Processing Magazine, IEEE Spectrum, Proceedings of the ACM, SPIE's conferences on Security and Watermarking of Multimedia Contents, other conference proceedings, etc.
3. Complete information for each reference must be given: title, authors, date of publication, page numbers, journal title, volume, number, proceedings, sponsor of conference, etc.

Project Grading:

1. Abstract or Executive summary: Summary of what will be found in the project report.  This includes key findings and interesting conclusions or things that you learned.
2. Introduction: Introduces the topic that you are covering and the big picture into which your topic fits; what issues the project is discussing or addressing;  what is the purpose of the system you are analyzing (if you are doing that).
3. Background: How does the system you are discussing work? Why is it done this way?  Give justifications as to why authors choose to do it the way they do.
4. Analysis or comparison - is there more than one way to solve the problem? Are there competing systems out there that take different approaches? How do they compare?
5. Simulation Results - if your project contains executable code to try to simulate a small part of the system, then you need to include the commented code and what your code is supposed to do.  For some projects there are many software packages available - matlab, other image processing packages, etc.
6. Conclusions:  what conclusions do the facts support.
7. References:  include proper format for all types.  Look at IEEE's website or articles to see how articles, books, etc. must be referenced.
8. Written report must be between 15-30 pages long (no longer).
9. Send code (if applicable) in an attachment with your report.

Last Updated March 06, 2008