Watermark evaluation testbed

Abstract

While digital watermarking has received much recent attention, it is still a relatively young technology. As such, there are few accepted tools and metrics that can be used to validate the performance claims asserted by members of the research community and evaluate the suitability of a watermarking technique for specific applications. This lack of a universally adopted set of metrics and methods has motivated us to develop a web-based digital watermark evaluation system known as the watermark evaluation testbed or WET. This system is designed to be focused on still image digital watermarking. WET consists of reference software that includes both watermark embedders and detectors, attacks, evaluation modules, and a large image database. This system has undergone several improvements since its inception. Our ultimate goal has been to develop a platform where any watermarking researcher can test not only the performance of known techniques, but also their own techniques. This goal is reached by the latest version of the system. New tools and concepts are designed to achieve the desired objectives. Moreover, we also summarize the development process of the entire project as well as introduce new directions for future work. ©