Multispectral information hiding in RGB image using bit-plane-based watermarking and its application

Abstract

Although it was expected that multispectral images would be implemented in many applications, such as remote sensing and medical imaging, their use has not been widely diffused in these fields. The development of a compact multispectral camera and display will be needed for practical use, but the format compatibility between multispectral and RGB images is also important for reducing the introduction cost and having high usability. We propose a method of embedding the spectral information into an RGB image by watermarking. The RGB image is calculated from the multispectral image, and then, the original multispectral image is estimated from the RGB image using Wiener estimation. The residual data between the original and the estimated multispectral image are compressed and embedded in the lower bit planes of the RGB image. The experimental results show that, as compared with Wiener estimation, the proposed method leads to more than a 10 dB gain in the peak signal-to-noise ratio of the reconstructed multispectral image, while there are almost no significant perceptual differences in the watermarked RGB image.