Image Watermarking Technique Research Articles

Retraction: An Efficient Deep Learning Approach for Brain Tumor Segmentation Using CNN (IOP Conf. Ser.: Mater. Sci. Eng. 981 022012)

This article has been retracted by IOP Publishing following an allegation that this article may contain tortured phrases [1]. IOP Publishing has investigated and agrees the article contains a number of nonsensical phrases that feature throughout the paper, masking overlap with previously published work [2-6], to the extent that the article makes very little sense. This casts serious doubt over the legitimacy of the article and/or expertise of the authors in this topic. IOP Publishing wishes to credit PubPeer Commenters [7] and the Problematic Paper Screener for bringing the issue to our attention. The authors agree to this retraction. [1] Cabanac G, Labbe C, Magazinov A, 2021, arXiv:2107.06751v1 [2] Karthik G.V.S, Fathima S.Y, Rahman M.Z.U, Ahamed S.R and Lay-Ekuakille A, 2013, Efficient Signal Conditioning Techniques for Brain Activity in Remote Health Monitoring Network, IEEE Sensors Journal. 13. 9 [3] Nayak S R, Mishra J and Palai G, 2018, An extended DBC approach using maximum Euclidian distance for fractal dimension of color images, Optik 166. 110-115 [4] Aparna P and Kishore P.V.V, 2018, An Efficient Medical Image Watermarking Technique in E-healthcare Application Using Hybridization of Compression and Cryptography Algorithm, Journal of Intelligent Systems. 27. 1 [5] Nithya S, Ajantha S , Mahapriya G, Mispa J, 2017, Measurement of Multimodal Brain Tumor Segmentation using Neural Network, IJERT, ICONNECT-2017 conference proceedings [6] Akshaya B, Nandhini J, Pauline Shilpa Ashwanthy J, Therasa M, 2016, Brain Tumor Segmentation Based on SFCM using Neural Network, IRJET 3 10 [7] https://pubpeer.com/publications/791A55B16A57C49057A542CA891EE9 Retraction published: 30 December 2022

A multi-scale image watermarking based on integer wavelet transform and singular value decomposition

Image watermarking technique is one of effective solutions to protect copyright, and it is applied to a variety of information security application domains. It needs to meet four requirements of imperceptibility, robustness, capacity and security. A multi-scale and secure image watermarking method is proposed in this work, which is based on the Integer Wavelet Transform (IWT) and Singular Value Decomposition (SVD). Four IWT sub-bands are firstly obtained after 1-level IWT on the host image, and the corresponding singular diagonal matrices of four sub-bands can be obtained using SVD. Then, each singular diagonal matrix is divided into four non-overlapping sections in terms of the size of embedding watermark. Particularly, the size of upper left part is same as the size of watermark. The watermark can be directly embedded into four upper left parts afterwards by multiplying different scaling factors to complete the final watermarking operation. Especially, a novel optimized authentication mechanism is designed to resolve the false positive problem, which exists in the SVD-based watermarking algorithms. In addition, three-dimensional optimal mapping algorithm is proposed to search the optimal scaling factors through a novel objective evaluation function, and it can significantly improve the imperceptibility and robustness. The experimental test and comparison analysis illustrate that the proposed watermark scheme demonstrates a high imperceptibility with peak signal to noise ratio values of 45 dB and strong robustness with average normalized correlation values of 0.92.

Entropy based spatial domain image watermarking and its performance analysis

Digital image watermarking technique based on LSB Substitution and Hill Cipher is presented and examined in this paper. For better imperceptibility watermark is inserted in the spatial domain. Further the watermark is implanted in the Cover Image block having the highest entropy value. To improve the security of the watermark hill cipher encryption is used. Both subjective and objective image quality assessment technique has been used to evaluate the imperceptibility of the proposed scheme.Further, the perceptual perfection of the watermarked pictures accomplished in the proposed framework has been contrasted and some state-of-art watermarking strategies. Test results demonstrates that the displayed method is robust against different image processing attacks like Salt and Peppers, Gaussian filter attack, Median filter attacks, etc.

An image watermarking technique using hybrid signals as watermarks

In digital communication, it is very necessary to prevent the unlawful intrusion of unwanted parties. Apart from that, the authenticity of a signal being sent is a key factor otherwise false data can break the commitment between the sender and the receiver of the signal. By digital watermarking, both the insurance of the authenticity and the prevention of unlawful intrusion can be maintained by inserting information into the host signal. In this paper, an image watermarking technique is proposed. In the proposed technique, hybrid signals are used as watermarks. Hybrid means using images as well as an audio signal as watermarks. This can certainly increase the robustness of the proposed technique as in case of very rigorous attacks at least one watermark can be survived ensuring the true owner of the signal being sent. The watermarks are inserted in different levels of the host image using the entire energy distribution of the host image. The energy of the watermarks is divided to embed different parts of the energy in different levels of the host signal. For doing this, discrete wavelet transform (DWT) and singular value decomposition (SVD) are used. The proposed technique offers a PSNR (Peak Signal to Noise Ratio) of 67.8606 dB and NCC (Normalized Cross-Correlation) above 0.9.

An enhanced technique for digital watermarking using multilevel DWT and error correcting codes

Digital Watermarking has attracted researchers’ attention because of its useful applications and, over the past decades, great efforts have been made to develop digital watermarking techniques and algorithms. Most researches use different transform techniques to enhance the robustness and quality of extracted watermark. This paper presents an enhanced technique for digital image watermarking based on multilevel Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT) in conjunction with the well-known RS codes over finite fields. To observe and appreciate the significance of using the error correcting codes technique for enhancing the digital watermarking performance against attacks, a series of experiments were conducted. The enhanced methodology, presented and implemented in this research, achieved a very good performance. Regarding the significance of using error correcting codes in conjunction with DWT transform digital image watermarking; it was shown that, in all cases investigated, for all the attacks considered, there was an increase in the robustness of the digital watermark, in terms of the performance measure SSIM values. In some cases, it improves, to almost 27 times, the case without using error correcting codes. Among each class of codes, for all the attacks, Reed-Solomon block codes of length n=255 over the Galois field GF(2^8) with k=135, performs better than all others.

Recent trends in image watermarking techniques for copyright protection: a survey

Digital copyright protection signifies the technology of rights protection, utilization control, and management of digital substances in the activity of production, propagation, retailing, and consumption. In the era of digital boom in information technology and multimedia, malicious exploitations and piracy have become a global phenomenon; thus, the need for digital content protection is inexorable. Image watermarking has been advocated universally to resolve innumerable dilemmas correlated with issues in the fields of digital rights management and multimedia security. According to anticipated applications, various suitable image watermarking procedures have been designed to safeguard the copyright of digital subjects. In this study, contemporary developments of digital image watermarking techniques are appraised so as to identify state-of-the-art practices and their limitations. This research contribution will be expedient for the academics in instigating efficient watermarking techniques for copyright authentication.

2DOTS-multi-bit-encoding for robust and imperceptible image watermarking

In this article, a new and improvised image watermarking (IW) technique on colored images is proposed to mitigate robustness and imperceptibility issues found often in the past presented schemes. Most schemes exhibit low robustness due to LSB’s (Least Significant Bit) and MSB’s (Most Significant Bit) based information hiding in the cover image. However, most of these IW schemes have low imperceptibility as the cover image distortion reveals to the attacker due to information hiding in MSB’s. Such IW schemes used to hide the secret message via MSBs and LSBs are susceptible to malicious intruder attacks which results in low robustness, whereas, the attacks on MSB’s have an impact of reduced imperceptibility. Therefore, this paper propounds a digital IW method named as 2D Otsu algorithm, which allows embedding of a grayscale image into a colored host in the wavelet domain. According to this algorithm, the host image is disintegrated into three color bands of blue, red, and green. Each band is divided into small patches leading to the calculation of entropy followed by finding of the threshold that is estimated by taking the average of entropies of all the patches. Wavelet representation of each patch with entropy less than the threshold is given by applying DWT (Discrete Wavelet Transform). Later, by decomposing gray-scale image into binary bits, secret information embedded by quantization technique into optimal wavelet coefficient blocks either encoding wavelet coefficient differences to 0-bits or 1-bits called MultiBit Encoding (MBE). The results obtained show that the imperceptibility and robustness of this proposed model are superior to other proposed watermarking models and this model gives better results than other models at the same payload.

A Novel Dual Image Watermarking Technique Using Homomorphic Transform and DWT

Abstract In this paper a new technique of dual image watermarking is proposed for protection of ownership rights which utilizes salient properties of homomorphic transform (HT), discrete wavelet transform (DWT), singular value decomposition (SVD) and Arnold transform (AT). In embedding algorithm host image is splitted into reflectance and illumination components using HT, DWT is further applied to the reflectance component resulting in frequency subbands (HL and LH) which are transformed by SVD. Two image watermarks are selected for embedding process whereas security of proposed algorithm is strengthen by performing scrambling of second watermark through AT. Both watermarks are transformed with DWT and SVD. Singular values (SVs) of both transformed watermark are embedded into SVs of host image. Simulation results clearly signifies for high robustness and imperceptibility of proposed algorithm as it is examined under various attacks. Superiority of proposed technique is illustrated by comparing it with other reported methods.

DCT based reversible watermarking technique for Medical Images with improved quality of watermarked image

These days, it is extremely easy to duplicate and distribute digital media, and because of this the protection of intellectual property is a very important issue. In case of medical images, the patient’s information and details can be securely hidden in the cover image. But being a special case the used data hiding technique should be properly selected. Being Medical Images it is necessary to retrieve the exact medical image after removal of the watermark. In this paper a simple reversible watermarking technique based on DCT is implemented. After embedding watermark, it is necessary to maintain quality of the medical image. To improve the quality of the watermarked medical image, the blocks in which the watermark is embedded, is selected based on variance of the blocks. The algorithm is tested for various medical image modalities. Being a simple algorithm it is fast and efficient.

A new colour image copyright protection approach using evolution-based dual watermarking

ABSTRACT Multiple watermarking techniques for images is receiving more attention in recent years for its wide variety of applications in different fields such as piracy of digital data, and copyrights protection. Current approaches rely on adding many watermarks in different bands or channels utilising scaling factor, and embedding locations that are mainly defined by experts. This brought many challenges in achieving equilibrium between security, robustness, and quality. Aiming to fill the gap of determining stationary scaling factor and embedding locations, the work proposed in this paper adapts genetic algorithm to find the optimality of these issues; that will enhance both of watermarking capacity and imperceptibility in colour images. To increase security, the suggested model encodes the watermarks using 2-D Walsh transform (WHT). Furthermore, Singular Value Decomposition (SVD) as a dimension reduction tool is utilised to factorise Wavelet coefficients to determine the most salient embedding locations. Experimental results show that the proposed model is more robust against common image manipulation attacks in terms of PSNR and NCC.

Locally optimum watermark decoder in NSST domain using RSS-based Cauchy distribution

It is important to consider the tradeoff between imperceptibility and robustness requirements in developing an image-watermarking technique, some statistical model-based image watermarking schemes have been designed in the past decade. The effectiveness of a statistical watermark decoder depends highly on the modeling of the transform-domain coefficients and the use of hypothesis testing. In this study, a multiplicative image watermarking scheme is proposed in the nonsubsampled Shearlet transform (NSST) domain, where NSST coefficients are modeled by ranked set sample (RSS) based Cauchy statistical distribution and locally most powerful (LMP) test criterion is applied. Digital image watermarking technique consists of two parts, namely, embedding and extracting. In the embedding process, to achieve relatively good imperceptibility and robustness, watermark data is inserted into the significant NSST directional subband that has the highest energy value, by modifying nonlinearly the significant NSST coefficients. In the extracting phase, a scheme is proposed for designing a blind NSST domain watermark decoder incorporating the RSS based Cauchy statistical distribution and LMP test criterion. Here, the RSS method is used to estimate the location parameter and shape parameter of Cauchy statistical distribution instead of traditional maximum-likelihood (ML) method, which can provide the Cauchy model with higher precision parameters. Experimental results on a set of standard test images show significant improvements in imperceptibility and robustness using the proposed method compared with the best known state-of-the-art approaches.

Image watermarking using soft computing techniques: A comprehensive survey

Image watermarking techniques are used to provide copyright protection and verify ownership of media/entities. This technique refers to the concept of embedding of secret data/information of an owner in a given media/entity for determining any ownership conflicts that can arise. Many watermarking approaches have been offered by various authors in the last few years. However, there are not enough studies and comparisons of watermarking techniques in soft computing environments. Nowadays, soft computing techniques are used to improve the performance of watermarking algorithms. This paper surveys soft computing-based image watermarking for several applications. We first elaborate on novel applications, watermark characteristics and different kinds of watermarking systems. Then, soft computing based watermarking approaches providing robustness, imperceptibility and good embedding capacity are compared systematically. Furthermore, major issues and potential solutions for soft computing-based watermarking are also discussed to encourage further research in this area. Thus, this survey paper will be helpful for researchers to implement an optimized watermarking scheme for several applications.

A hybrid OFDM–CDMA-based robust image watermarking technique

Digital watermarking is a process of embedding hidden information called watermark into different kinds of media objects. It uses basic modulation, multiplexing and transform techniques of communication for hiding information. Traditional techniques used are least significant bit (LSB) modification, discrete cosine transform (DCT), discrete wavelet transform (DWT), discrete Fourier transform (DFT), code division multiple access (CDMA) or a combination of these. Among these, CDMA is the most robust against different attacks except geometric attacks. This paper proposes a blind and highly robust watermarking technique by utilizing the basis of orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) and CDMA communication system. In this scheme, the insertion process starts by taking DFT of host images, permuting the watermark bits in randomized manner and recording them in a seed as a key. Then PSK modulation follows inverse DFT (IDFT) that gives watermark information as OFDM symbols. These symbols are spread using spreading codes and then arithmetically added to the host image. Finally, scheme applies inverse DCT (IDCT) to get watermarked host images. The simulation results of the proposed scheme are compared with CDMA-based scheme in DCT domain. The results show that the robustness of the proposed scheme is higher than the existing scheme for non-geometric attacks.

Analysis of Digital Image Watermarking Techniques through Hybrid Methods

Digital image watermarking is an attractive research area since it protects the multimedia data from unauthorized access. For designing an efficient and robust digital image watermarking system, the trade-off among imperceptibility, robustness, capacity, and security must be maintained. Various studies regarding this concern have been performed to ensure these requirements by hybridizing different domains, such as spatial and transform domains. In this paper, we have presented an analytical study of the existing hybrid digital image watermarking methods. At first, we have given a standard framework for designing a hybrid method that ensures the basic design requirements of watermarking for various applications. After a brief literature review, we compared and analyzed the complexity of several existing hybrid methods in a tabular form. The limitations and applications of these methods are also highlighted. Finally, we summarized the challenges of the existing methods and concluded the study by giving future research directions.

Wavelet-Hadamard based blind image watermarking using genetic algorithm and decision tree

Recently the active use of Internet and multimedia technologies has increased the violation of copyright. Digital watermarking has a crucial role in the field of multimedia copyright protection. In this paper, an optimized image watermarking technique based on Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT) and Hadamard transform is proposed. Genetic Algorithm (GA) is an optimizing technique used to satisfy the tradeoff between robustness and imperceptibility. Blind property is conducted using the estimation capability of Decision Tree (DT). First the host image is transformed using second level DWT, then Hadamard transform is applied on selected DWT sub-bands. Adaptive multiple strength values are computed using GA. The watermark is successfully extracted using the trained DT which estimates the original coefficients needed for the extraction process without the need for the original host image. The proposed technique is evaluated against several types of attacks: compression, median filtering, salt and pepper noise, histogram equalization, blurring, scaling, painting, and cropping. Experimental results show that the proposed watermarking technique is robust against these attacks while keeping good imperceptibility. The proposed technique outperforms the compared techniques according to robustness, imperceptibility, and capacity.

Comparison of the Schemes in Digital Image Watermarking Techniques

With the rapid developing of network techniques and multimedia technology, the data security becomes an important and challenging research topic. The emergence of digital image watermarking technology provides an effective way for multimedia copyright protection, which embeds specific information. This paper analyses the characteristics of digital watermarking technology firstly, then studies some important digital image watermarking algorithms, finally compares the schemes in digital image watermarking techniques. The work aims to compare the differences of the schemes in digital image watermarking techniques and improve the performance of digital image watermarking.

Development of a New Blind Watermarking for Medical Images

Securing the data of patient and keeping the information confidential has become a challenging task at present days. More number of chances are available for information alteration or security breach. When the information is transferred from source to destination digital image watermarking technique is most commonly used to secure the patient’s information watermarking provides the copy right protection, authentication proof and detection of tampering. This paper presents a watermarking technique to embed patient’s information in a medical image so that information can be transferred securely and information alteration would be prevented. An Arnold Chaotic Map is applied to the sensitive watermark image to scramble the pixels in the sensitive watermark image. The cover medical image is partitioned into non overlapping blocks and DCT is applied to each block. Each and every bit of the watermark image is embedded into block by using Weber Descriptor. By using this Weber Descriptor robustness of an image will be increased. An experimental result shows that the proposed algorithm improves the robustness against various attacks like compression, filtering and noising.

A REVIEW ON WAVELET TRANSFORM BASED WATERMARKING TECHNIQUES

The fast growth of technology nowadays leads to misuse of data or information shared via the internet. The data that shared can be hacked and manipulated. The fields like Military, Medicine uses sensitive data and hence need secure communication. These requirements can be achieved by Digital Image Watermarking Techniques. Many techniques were invented for watermarking but still, a transform based watermarking techniques provide better robustness and imperceptibility. Wavelet based transforms like discrete wavelet transform (DWT) and Wavelet Packet Transform (WPT) is considered in this review. DWT, WPT based watermarking techniques are discussed in this work and at the end, these two transforms are compared.

Invisible Colour Image Watermarking Technique for Colour Images Using DWT and SVD

Recent popularity of social media and content sharing networks paired with fast Internet access has paved the way for mass multimedia content sharing on the Internet. As a result, volumes of sensitive data are been shared in various digital forms such that the risk of copyright infringements and misappropriations of digital content has grown at the same rate. In order to preserve copyright or authenticate digital content, digital watermarking has been considered as a viable solution for these problems. In the domain of digital watermarking, embedding a colour image as an invisible watermark to a colour cover image remain a challenge. As a solution to this problem, this paper presents such an invisible watermarking scheme based on DWT and SVD. The watermark created using the novel approach is experimentally shown to have the robustness, imperceptibility and capacity requirements.

A reliable and secure image watermarking algorithm using homomorphic transform in DWT domain

Image watermarking is one of the reliable methods which easily retains integrity and confidentiality of images against illegitimate users thereby ensuring copyright protection. In this paper a new image watermarking technique is proposed which employs fusion of discrete wavelet transform (DWT), homomorphic transform (HT), singular value decomposition along with Arnold transform (AT). In this work first level DWT is performed on host image which results in various subbands (LL, HL, LH and HH). HL subband is chosen which is further transformed by HT to decompose it in illumination and reflectance components. The watermark is scrambled with AT in order to strengthen security towards malicious attacks. Scrambled watermark is now embedded into singular values of the reflectance component. As reflectance component contains prominent image features, hence embedding in this part provides better immunity against several attacks and imperceptibility is also attained as this component varies very rapidly. Thus, major aim for proposed watermarking technique is achieved. The proposed scheme is implemented with numerous wavelet families such as Haar, Coiflet, symlet and biorthogonal. The main idea for implementing with different wavelets is to judge which wavelet demonstrates good robustness against various attacks. Proposed scheme performance is also evaluated by examining comprehensively under several attacks such as rotation, sharpening. Results clearly prove high robustness for the proposed scheme. Superiority of proposed scheme is clearly indicated by comparing it with other commonly—used schemes as reported by other researchers. Benchmark attacks like “Checkmark” attacks are also verified for the proposed scheme.