Perceptual hashing

Perceptual hashing is the use of an algorithm that produces a snippet or fingerprint of various forms of multimedia. A perceptual hash is a type of locality-sensitive hash, which is analogous if features of the multimedia are similar. This is not to be confused with cryptographic hashing, which relies on the avalanche effect of a small change in input value creating a drastic change in output value. Perceptual hash functions are widely used in finding cases of online copyright infringement as well as in digital forensics because of the ability to have a correlation between hashes so similar data can be found (for instance with a differing watermark). Based on research at Northumbria University, it can also be applied to simultaneously identify similar contents for video copy detection and detect malicious manipulations for video authentication.