Fragile Image Watermarking Research Articles

TCBR and TCBD: Evaluation metrics for tamper coincidence problem in fragile image watermarking

This paper proposed two evaluation metrics of the tamper coincidence in a block map design for image watermarking. These evaluation metrics are called Tamper Coincidence Block Ratio (TCBR) and Tamper Coincidence Block Density (TCBD). A tamper coincidence occurred in image authentication and self-recovery when the recovery data and the original block location were tampered with simultaneously. A high tamper coincidence limits image inpainting’s capability to recover the region, leading to an imprecise recovered image. The ratio and density of the tamper coincidence may significantly affect the final recovered image quality. Previously, researchers mentioned the tamper coincidence in their experiment but did not evaluate it with any metrics. They evaluated the robustness of their technique based on the final recovered image quality using the Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratio (PSNR) and Structural Similarity Index Measure (SSIM). Tamper coincidences are primarily affected by the block map design implemented by the researcher. Thus, TCBR and TCBD provide valuable insight into the block map design’s effectiveness in preventing tamper coincidence. The experimental result shows that the TCBR and TCBD values are inversely proportional to the recovered image quality. A high TCBR and TCBD value leads to low recovered image quality. Therefore, this paper will help the researchers design an effective block map by minimizing the TCBR and TCBD values to obtain the highest recovered image quality.

Reversible Image Fragile Watermarking with Dual Tampering Detection

The verification of image integrity has attracted increasing attention. Irreversible algorithms embed fragile watermarks into cover images to verify their integrity, but they are not reversible due to unrecoverable loss. In this paper, a new dual tampering detection scheme for reversible image fragile watermarking is proposed. The insect matrix reversible embedding algorithm is used to embed the watermark into the cover image. The cover image can be fully recovered when the dual-fragile-watermarked images are not tampered with. This study adopts two recovery schemes and adaptively chooses the most appropriate scheme to recover tampered data according to the square errors between the tampered data and the recovered data of two watermarked images. Tampering coincidence may occur when a large region of the fragile-watermarked image is tampered with, and the recovery information corresponding to the tampered pixels may be missing. The tampering coincidence problem is solved using image-rendering techniques. The experimental results show that the PSNR value of the watermarked image obtained using our scheme can reach 46.37 dB, and the SSIM value is 0.9942. In addition, high-accuracy tampering detection is achieved.

A Fragile Image Watermarking Scheme in DWT Domain Using Chaotic Sequences and Error-Correcting Codes.

With the rapid development of digital signal processing tools, image contents can be easily manipulated or maliciously tampered with. Fragile watermarking has been largely used for content authentication purposes. This article presents a new proposal for image fragile watermarking algorithms for tamper detection and image recovery. The watermarked bits are obtained from the parity bits of an error-correcting code whose message is formed from a binary chaotic sequence (generated from a secret key known to all legitimate users) and from bits of the original image. Part of the codeword (the chaotic bits) is perfectly known to these users during the extraction phase, adding security and robustness to the watermarking method. The watermarked bits are inserted at specific sub-bands of the discrete wavelet transform of the original image and are used as authentication bits for the tamper detection process. The imperceptibility, detection, and recovery of this algorithm are tested for various common attacks over digital images. The proposed algorithm is analyzed for both grayscale and colored images. Comparison results reveal that the proposed technique performs better than some existing methods.

Nested Block Based Double Self-Embedding Fragile Image Watermarking With Super-Resolution Recovery

Nested Block Based Double Self-Embedding Fragile Image Watermarking With Super-Resolution Recovery

Fragile Image Watermarking Based on Bidiagonal SVD-LSB for Tamper Detection and Localization

Fragile Image Watermarking Based on Bidiagonal SVD-LSB for Tamper Detection and Localization

Image fragile watermarking algorithm based on deneighbourhood mapping

To address the security risk caused by fixed offset mapping and the limited recoverability of random mapping used in image watermarking, a self-embedding fragile image watermarking algorithm based on deneighbourhood mapping are proposed. First, the image is divided into several 2 × 2 blocks, and authentication watermark and recovery watermark are generated based on the average value of the image blocks. Then, the denighbourhood mapping is implemented as, for each image block, its mapping block is randomly selected outside its neighbourhood. Finally, the authentication watermark and the recovery watermark are embedded into the image block itself and its mapping block. Theoretical analysis indicates that in the case of continuous area tampering, the proposed watermarking algorithm can achieve a better recovery rate than that of the method based on the random mapping. The experimental results verify the rationality and effectiveness of the theoretical analysis. Moreover, compared with the existing embedding algorithms based on random mapping, chaos mapping, and Arnold mapping, in the case of continuous area tampering, the proposed algorithm also achieves a higher average recovery rate.

AuSR1: Authentication and self-recovery using a new image inpainting technique with LSB shifting in fragile image watermarking

With the rapid development of multimedia technology, editing and manipulating digital images have become more accessible than ever. This paper proposed color image authentication based on blind fragile image watermarking for tamper detection and self-recovery named AuSR1. The AuSR1 divides each channel of the cover image into non-overlapping blocks with the size of 2 × 2 pixels. The authentication data is embedded into the original block location, while the recovery data is embedded into the distant location from the original location based on the block mapping algorithm. The watermark data is then embedded into the 2 LSB to achieve high quality of the recovered image under tampering attacks. In addition, the permutation algorithm is applied to ensure the security of the watermark data. The AuSR1 utilizes a three-layer authentication algorithm to achieve a high detection rate.The experimental results show that the scheme produced a PSNR value of 45.57 dB and an SSIM value of 0.9972 of the watermarked images. Furthermore, the AuSR1 detected the tampered area of the images with a high precision value of 0.9943. In addition, the recovered image achieved a PSNR value of 27.64 dB and an SSIM value of 0.9339 on a 50% tampering rate.

An Optimized Fragile Image Watermarking Method for Tamper Detection and Recovery Using SPIHT and Reed-Solomon Coding

An Optimized Fragile Image Watermarking Method for Tamper Detection and Recovery Using SPIHT and Reed-Solomon Coding

Pixel-based fragile image watermarking based on absolute moment block truncation coding

Pixel-based fragile image watermarking based on absolute moment block truncation coding

Blind Robust and Self-Embedding Fragile Image Watermarking for Image Authentication and Copyright Protection with Recovery Capability

Blind Robust and Self-Embedding Fragile Image Watermarking for Image Authentication and Copyright Protection with Recovery Capability

Fragile watermarking for image authentication using BRINT and ELM

Privacy and security concerns regarding digital information have been increasing with advancements in multimedia and network technologies. Digital images are an integral component of online-distributed content, which plays a crucial role in forming public perceptions and opinions. They also play a major role in sensitive areas, such as law and defense. Any attempt to tamper with them is, therefore, a serious issue. One common approach to this problem is fragile image watermarking, which is used to ensure the authenticity of digital content. In this paper, a new fragile watermarking method for the authentication of digital images is proposed based on a binary rotation invariant and noise tolerant (BRINT) local texture descriptor and an extreme learning machine (ELM). BRINT is used to generate and retrieve the watermark in both the embedding and extraction procedures. In parallel, ELM is used in both procedures to learn and recover any tampered areas. The experimental results showed that the proposed scheme does not degrade image quality, allows for tamper detection, and has a recovery ability comparable with state-of-the-art fragile and semi-fragile watermarking schemes. Moreover, the proposed scheme has been validated as a fragile watermarking method with the potential to detect and locate modifications in digital images, such as copy-paste forgery, JPEG compression, and noise addition. This method is useful in sensitive fields, like defense, law, and journalism, in which decision-making based on digital visual information is necessary, to ensure that an image is authentic and has not been tampered with.

A secure image watermarking for tamper detection and localization

Data security has become a major concern of present time. Digital image watermarking is seen as a viable solution to ensure the integrity of image data. Watermarking algorithms can detect the presence of various attacks on images. In this work, a secure and efficient fragile image watermarking technique is proposed. The proposed watermarking algorithm aims to find image tampering and its location. The proposed approch is a spatial domain, block-based embedding technique. It introduces a unique key based embedding using SHA-1 (Secure Hashing Algorithm) hashing. The watermarked images have high PSNR and SSIM. The algorithm can handle various size of tampering, from very small to large. The proposed technique has been tested for a wide variety of tampering attacks like copy-paste, copy-move, constant average, and general tampering. It can efficiently detect tampering in the presence of these attacks.

A self-recovery watermarking scheme based on block truncation coding and quantum chaos map

To take into account the invisibility, recovery quality, detection ability, and security, a new digital image fragile watermarking method based on block truncation coding (BTC) and quantum chaos map is proposed. In this method generates the authentication watermark for each 4 × 4 block and generates the recovery watermark for each 2 × 2 block by block truncation coding. For each block, the block truncation coding is used to classify the image blocks into smooth blocks and rough blocks. For different blocks, recovery data can be generated by allocating fewer bits to the smooth blocks and more bits to the rough blocks to encoding the block content. Quantum chaos map is used to generate the block mapping sequence for embedding recovery watermark to improve the shortcoming of watermarking such as small keyspace and low security. The experimental results show that the proposed scheme improves the quality of watermarked and recovered images. Additionally, this approach achieves higher security than the existing methods, under different attacks, such as general tampering, collage attack, content-only, and a hybrid attack.

A Self-Recovery Fragile Image Watermarking with Variable Watermark Capacity

Currently, the watermark capacity of most self-recovery fragile image watermarking schemes is fixed. That means for smooth regions and texture regions, the length of watermark information is always the same. However, it is impractical since more recovery information is needed for the recovery of texture regions. In this paper, a self-recovery fragile image watermarking with variable watermark capacity is proposed. Based on the characteristic of singular value decomposition (SVD), a new block classification method is introduced. The image blocks are classified into smooth blocks and texture blocks. For smooth blocks, the average pixel values are adopted as the recovery information to recover the tampered blocks, while for texture blocks, the quantized and coded DCT coefficients are adopted as the recovery information. After encrypted by binary pseudo-random sequence, the recovery watermark of each block is embedded into its mapping block. In the detection side, the three-level detection mechanism is applied to detect and locate the tampered regions. The experimental results prove that the proposed method achieves good tamper detection results, and the recovered image has better image quality than other self-recovery fragile watermarking methods.

Image Fragile Watermarking through Quaternion Linear Transform in Secret Space

In this paper, we apply the quaternion framework for color images to a fragile watermarking algorithm with the objective of multimedia integrity protection (Quaternion Karhunen-Loève Transform Fragile Watermarking (QKLT-FW)). The use of quaternions to represent pixels allows to consider the color information in a holistic and integrated fashion. We stress out that, by taking advantage of the host image quaternion representation, we extract complex features that are able to improve the embedding and verification of fragile watermarks. The algorithm, based on the Quaternion Karhunen-Loève Transform (QKLT), embeds a binary watermark into some QKLT coefficients representing a host image in a secret frequency space: the QKLT basis images are computed from a secret color image used as a symmetric key. A computational intelligence technique (i.e., genetic algorithm) is employed to modify the host image pixels in such a way that the watermark is contained in the protected image. The sensitivity to image modifications is then tested, showing very good performance.

An improved method for digital image fragile watermarking based on chaotic maps

In this paper, the digital image fragile watermarking method based on chaotic maps is proposed. Our method has some significant advantageous in comparison with other available methods. Firstly, we reduce watermark payloads, while they have high quality of recovery and security. In watermark embedding phase, we process the image in order to produce the information array for each block, which finally embedded in the host image to build watermarked image. The information array for each block has different length, which is defined based on block characteristic that could be smooth or rough. The second superiority of the proposed method is proposing a new metric for calculating roughness of image block, which leads to less consume of bandwidth in comparison with other available methods. Finally, we use chaotic map for block-mapping that enhances the security. Our method provides basic requirements of watermarking scheme such as, invisibility, recover quality and security. Experimental Results have proved that our method is powerful in tamper detection, self-recovery and robust against known watermarking attacks.

Low Complexity Image Authentication Based on Singular Value Decomposition and Mixed Scales Faber Schauder Wavelet

The technology development has made the modification of digital content easier. The need of authenticating digital content is increasing. Different fragile watermarking methods have been proposed for image authentication. Image authentication is possible by embedding a mark into the digital image using watermarking. In some application low complexity algorithm is required, such as real-time and video processing applications. In this paper, we propose a low complexity image fragile watermarking based on Faber Schauder Discrete Wavelet Transform (FSDWT) and Singular Value Decomposition where the data to be embedded is a logo. The Watermark was generated by applying Xor operation between the logo’s bits and the bits of dominant blocks singular values of the image to authenticate. These dominant blocks are obtained by applying FSDWT to the image to be authenticated. Since the image is characterized by its contours and it’s around textures which contain an important concentration of dominant blocks, any image modification will result in significant change of the dominant blocks singular values, which helps the watermarking scheme to detect the authenticity of the image. Since FSDWT is composed of simple operations, the algorithm has a low complexity. Experimental results and analysis demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.

LBP based Watermarking Scheme for Image Tamper Detection and Recovery

In recent years, digital images are in use in a wide range of Applications and for multiple purposes. They also play an important role in the storage and transfer of visual information, especially the secret ones. With this widespread usage of digital images, in addition to the increasing number of tools and software of digital images editing, it has become easy to manipulate and change the actual information of the image. Therefore, it has become necessary to check the authenticity and the integrity of the image by using modern and digital techniques, which contribute to analysis and understanding of the images’ content, and then make sure of their integrity Digital image fragile watermarking is an information hiding technique which adds the watermark into the host image for authentication .while achieving the high integrity one should not compromise with quality distortion of images. numbers of watermarking schemes exist today for balancing between the tamper detection rate and quality of reconstructed images in propose scheme we aim at maintain high tamper detection rate as well as high Peak to Signal Noise Ratio (PSNR) of reconstructed images for their quality. For that we utilize Local Binary Pattern (LBP) for this purpose to obtain the optimum solution. In the proposes scheme we used a fragile image watermarking scheme with recover ability based on local binary pattern (LBP). The local binary pattern operator used to extract localized spatial features. A local binary pattern is used to represent the localized relations of a pixel with its neighborhood pixels. Every pixel measured by the LBP operator and obtained its own local binary pattern as representation of local spatial relations. We utilizes the LBP operator to generate authentication data which are embedded into each image block with 3 × 3 pixels size for tamper detection and recovery. The recovery information is obtained by calculating the mean value of each image block, and then the mean value is converted into a binary string which is embedded into eight neighboring pixels’ LSBs of each image block for image recovering In the propose scheme we can take the input as 256 × 256 as well as 512×512 dimension image, one of the advantage compare to other existing system is that it can also processed the color image. The quality is calculated by the PSNR but in the proposed scheme PSNR at peak point is also calculated to get better result. General Terms Digital image watermarking, fragile image watermarking, local binary pattern (LBP), PSNR (peak signal to noise ratio)

A Grayscale Image Fragile Watermark Authentication System in Spatial-Domain

This study deals with devising and implementing a novel technique for image authentication and secured message transmission based on hiding large volume of data into gray scale images. A grayscale image fragile watermark authentication system in spatial-domain is proposed. First it preprocesses the watermark image and resizes it to a quarter of the size of the original image. Then, it generates a random key matrix K and 128bit message authentication code from the original image. It replaces the 128bit message authentication code for the former 128bit of K to obtain a new key matrix KH. Then, it calculates the embedded position P=KHi xor (b7,b6,b5.b4) i MOD 3. b7,b6,b5,b4 are the high 4 bits of the original images pixel. It embeds the watermark image according to P value to the lower 4 bits of the original images pixel. The system is made in experiment. The result shows the system has good imperceptibility.

Effective management of medical information through ROI-lossless fragile image watermarking technique

In this article, we have proposed a blind, fragile and Region of Interest (ROI) lossless medical image watermarking (MIW) technique, providing an all-in-one solution tool to various medical data distribution and management issues like security, content authentication, safe archiving, controlled access retrieval, and captioning. The proposed scheme combines lossless data compression and encryption technique to embed electronic health record (EHR)/DICOM metadata, image hash, indexing keyword, doctor identification code and tamper localization information in the medical images. Extensive experiments (both subjective and objective) were carried out to evaluate performance of the proposed MIW technique. The findings offer suggestive evidence that the proposed MIW scheme is an effective all-in-one solution tool to various issues of medical information management domain. Moreover, given its relative simplicity, the proposed scheme can be applied to the medical images to serve in many medical applications concerned with privacy protection, safety, and management.