Journal of Jilin University(Engineering and Technology Edition) ›› 2025, Vol. 55 ›› Issue (12): 4063-4071.doi: 10.13229/j.cnki.jdxbgxb.20250014

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Image manipulation localization method based on boundary uncertainty learning

Hai-peng CHEN1,2(),Hong-xin LIU1,2,Hui KANG1,2,Xue-jie LIU1()   

  1. 1.College of Computer Science and Technology,Jilin University,Changchun 130012,China
    2.Key Laboratory of Symbolic Computation and Knowledge Engineering of Ministry of Education,Jilin University,Changchun 130012,China
  • Received:2025-01-06 Online:2025-12-01 Published:2026-02-03
  • Contact: Xue-jie LIU E-mail:chenhp@jlu.edu.cn;xuejie@jlu.edu.cn

Abstract:

The limitations of current image manipulation localization methods, such as the extraction of features at a single scale, the misdetection and omission of small tampered regions caused by background confusion, and the uncertainty existing in prediction results, are addressed. An image manipulation localization method based on edge uncertainty learning is proposed. The base features of the tampered image are extracted by means of a pyramid vision transformer. A coarse localization map is then generated through multi-level interactive coarse localization branches. To enhance the detection of small tampered regions, a small target-aware refinement branch is employed. Multi-scale feature fusion is achieved with the use of a dedicated module, which enables the full interaction and integration of features across different scales. Additionally, entropy-based perceptual loss is introduced to supervise boundary uncertainty, thus significantly reducing the uncertainty of the prediction results. The proposed method is evaluated on five widely-used public image tampering datasets in both in-domain and cross-domain experiments. It is demonstrated by the results that the method can effectively localize tampered regions and outperform existing approaches.

Key words: computer application, image manipulation localization, multi-scale feature interaction, refined perception of small tampering areas, boundary uncertainty learning

CLC Number: 

  • TP391

Fig.1

Overall network structure of the proposed method"

Fig.2

Architecture of multi-attention coarse locating module"

Fig.3

Architecture of full attention module"

Fig.4

Architecture of feature aware enhancement module"

Fig.5

Architecture of multi-scale feature fusion module"

Table 1

Description of the datasets"

数据集分割设置篡改操作类型后处理操作
训练测试拼接复制-粘贴移除
CASIA155 123921
NIST1616404160
COVER177525
Columbia1813050
IMD2020191 610400

Table 2

Comparison of quantitative results of in-domain experiments between this paper’s method and other methods"

方法CASIAVNIST16ColumbiaCOVERIMD2020Mean
AUCF1AUCF1AUCF1AUCF1AUCF1AUCF1
ManTra-Net200.6480.2230.7950.4620.8240.7770.2830.7850.2650.7660.308
SPAN210.7090.2130.9610.5820.9360.8150.7910.3250.8490.484
DenseFCN220.6310.2090.9540.7040.8810.7100.7540.1850.7230.2860.7890.419
SATFL230.6970.2460.9370.6130.8920.8040.7670.3470.7960.3000.8180.462
MVSS-Net100.7480.3900.9810.8270.7190.7030.8080.2840.8170.4110.8150.523
TANet20.7390.4930.9550.9010.9820.9600.7560.4250.7660.3830.8400.633
DMFF-Net240.7910.3860.9760.8430.9450.8370.7270.2820.7840.3280.8450.535
DAE-Net110.8050.4940.9840.8710.9730.8720.7410.3300.8260.3380.8660.581
PBUL-Net0.8520.6620.9810.9060.9820.9610.8190.5250.7960.4880.8860.708

Table 3

Quantitative comparison of this paper’s method with other method on unseen datasets"

方法CASIAVNIST16Columbia
AUCF1AUCF1AUCF1
ManTra-Net210.6480.2230.4750.0950.4810.386
DenseFCN220.6310.2090.6040.0510.5860.317
MVSS-Net230.7480.3900.6430.2460.6970.471
TANet20.7390.4930.6380.2480.7100.440
DAE-Net120.8050.4940.6630.2990.7260.486
PBUL-Net0.8520.6620.7020.3440.8000.690

Fig.6

Qualitative comparison of this paper’s method with other methods"

Table 4

Quantitative results of different components on CASIA dataset"

网络组件AUCF1
MFFMXFAMFAEMEUBAL
a0.8100.605
b0.8190.618
c0.8320.629
d0.8380.641
e0.8480.653
f0.8520.662

Fig.7

Robustness experiment results"

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