A Positive Effect of Image Sensor Noise

There is one positive consequence of image sensor noise - it helps to prevent forgeries. Université Paris-Saclay, France, and Universidad de la República, Uruguay, publish a paper "Noisesniffer: a Fully Automatic Image Forgery Detector Based on Noise Analysis" by Marina Gardella, Pablo Musé, Jean-Michel Morel, and Miguel Colom.

"Images undergo a complex processing chain from the moment light reaches the camera’s sensor until the final digital image is delivered. Each of these operations leave traces on the noise model which enable forgery detection through noise analysis. In this article we define a background stochastic model which makes it possible to detect local noise anomalies characterized by their number of false alarms. The proposed method is both automatic and blind, allowing quantitative and subjectivity-free detections. Results show that the proposed method outperforms the state of the art."