Novel reversible watermarking scheme for authentication of military images

Abstract

This paper presents a novel reversible watermarking scheme based on histogram modification for the authentication of military images. The Hash Message Authentication Code (HMAC) of the image is computed and embedded into the image for authentication. Based on a criterion, the distinct pixel values with Non-Zero Frequencies of the histogram are selected for embedding watermark bits and the preferred pixel values are stored as a key. This key is used for both the watermark extraction and the original image restoration. The bits of extracted HMAC from the marked image and HMAC of the restored image are compared for authentication.