Intelligent Multimedia Analysis for Security Applications

The advances in the generation and processing of multimedia data (e. g. documents, images, video, audio, animations, etc. ) have had an immense impact on multimedia applications and, as a result, multimedia has permeated almost every aspect of our daily lives. This development has also brought with it a whole host of issues and ch- lenges which were either not as apparent before or were non-existent. Today, digital media is relied upon as primary news and information resource, as evidence in a court of law, as part of medical records or as financial documents. However, there is still lack of authoritative mechanisms to verify the origin and veracity of media data. - deed, multimedia content has become an extremely valuable asset, and it is being both disseminated and consumed on a larger scale than ever before, but the issues conce- ing how the content owners and publishers should control the distribution of and - cess to their content have not been satisfactorily resolved yet. There are various other issues related to use of multimedia that require further analysis and research. For example, it is a known fact that some criminal organi- tions communicate with its members by posting information embedded media to p- lic forums and web-sites to evade surveillance by law enforcement. Conventional multimedia processing approaches do not provide sufficiently effective means for - fending against such communication.

This is one of the very few books focused on analysis of multimedia data and newly emerging multimedia applications with an emphasis on security. The main objective of this project was to assemble as much research coverage as possible related to the field by defining the latest innovative technologies and providing the most comprehensive list of research references. The book includes sixteen chapters highlighting current concepts, issues and emerging technologies. Distinguished scholars from many prominent research institutions around the world contribute to the book. The book covers various aspects, including not only some fundamental knowledge and the latest key techniques, but also typical applications and open issues. Topics covered include dangerous or abnormal event detection, interaction recognition, person identification based on multiple traits, audiovisual biometric person authentication and liveness verification, emerging biometric technologies, sensitive information filtering for teleradiology, detection of nakedness in images, audio forensics, steganalysis, media content tracking authentication and illegal distributor identification through watermarking and content-based copy detection. We believe that the comprehensive coverage of diverse disciplines in the field of intelligent multimedia analysis for security applications will contribute to a better understanding of all topics, research, and discoveries in this emerging and evolving field and that the included contributions will be instrumental in the expansion of the corresponding body of knowledge, making this book a reference source of information. It is our sincere hope that this publication and its great amount of information and research will assist our research colleagues, faculty members and students, and organization decision makers in enhancing their understanding for the concepts, issues, problems, trends, challenges and opportunities related to this research field. Perhaps this book will even inspire its readers to contribute to the current discoveries in this immense field.