Secure and robust watermark scheme based on multiple transforms and particle swarm optimization algorithm

Abstract

To improve the security, robustness and imperceptibility of watermark schemes, a novel watermark scheme is devised by fusing multiple watermark techniques, including lifting wavelet transform, discrete cosine transform, discrete fractional angular transform and singular value decomposition. To solve the false positive problem in various SVD-based watermark schemes, transform domain encryption is utilized and the embedding component of watermark instead of the whole watermark is embedded into the host image. Furthermore, the particle swarm optimization algorithm is used to optimize the scaling factors and the parameter of the improved discrete fractional angular transform. The proposed watermark scheme is tested by several attacks, such as JPEG compression, low-pass filtering, Histogram equalization, contrast enhance, and etc. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed watermark scheme is superior in the aspects of security, robustness and imperceptibility.