Image Watermarking Technique Research Articles

A Survey of Digital Image Watermarking Techniques in Spatial, Transform, and Hybrid Domains

In this digital era, the vast development of multimedia environments and information technology creates a need for protecting digital content from unauthorized access. Digital watermarking is a universally accepted technique for tackling the issues in the field of multimedia security and information rights management. Several appropriate image watermarking processes have been designed to secure the digital content. An efficient watermarking technique should maintain the tradeoff among imperceptibility, robustness, embedding capacity, and security. Primarily, this paper presents the classifications and applications of digital image watermarking techniques. The discussion comprises the spatial, transform, and hybrid image watermarking methods as well as its comparison with the different schemes. The contribution of this article will be beneficial to the academicians for gaining deep knowledge about image watermarking schemes.

Statistical image watermark decoder using NSM-HMT in NSCT-FGPCET magnitude domain

The image watermarking technology is an effective technology for protecting image copyright at present. Image watermarking techniques have a constraint relationship between imperceptibility, robustness, and watermark capacity. Balancing imperceptibility, robustness, and watermark capacity becomes a tricky problem. This paper proposes a statistical image watermarking scheme using nonsubsampled Contourlet transform (NSCT) domain fast generic polar complex exponential transform (FGPCET) magnitudes and nonsymmetric mixtures (NSM) based hidden Markov tree (HMT). In the embedding part, to enhance robustness and imperceptibility, we insert the watermark signal into the robust local NSCT domain FGPCET magnitudes through the multiplicative method. In the decoding part, a statistical image watermarking decoder is designed using the NSM-HMT model and maximum likelihood criterion. Here, marginal characteristics and strong correlations of local NSCT domain FGPCET magnitudes are described by NSM-HMT. In addition, the generalized expectation-maximization (GEM)-clusterized method of moments (CMM) approach is used for accurate parameters. Extensive Monte Carlo experiments validate the better performance of the proposed image watermarking method compared to other well-known methods.

A secure gray-scale image watermarking technique in fractional DCT domain using zig-zag scrambling

Security of watermark is a huge concern when dealing with imperceptible watermarking for copyright protection and owner identification. A novel watermarking technique that is intrinsically secure against unauthorized extraction of watermark and robust against a variety of attacks has been proposed in this paper. Semi-blind in nature, the technique employs fractional discrete cosine transform (FDCT) and zig-zag scrambling to add a layer of security while embedding watermark bits in the cover image. Transformation through multiple fractional value pairs yields robust results against attacks for every cover image. A pair out of these is chosen while embedding the watermark. The same pair is needed at the time of extraction of original watermark from a signed image. This pair of unique values adds a layer of security in the proposed technique. After dividing the cover image into sub-blocks that are non-overlapping, fuzzy entropy is used to make the selection of appropriate sub-blocks in which watermark bits are to be embedded. These blocks are first mapped in a zig-zag fashion and then, after selection of half sub-blocks, FDCT is applied on each of them. FDCT coefficients serve as training data for Kernel extreme learning machine (KELM). Used as a non-linear regression model, KELM predicts the value of a particular coefficient with the help of neighboring transform domain coefficients. Multiple scaling factors are used to control the extent to which the watermark bit modifies the predicted coefficient. Strength of these scaling factors is determined and controlled with the help of standard deviation of every selected sub-block. The technique shows perfect extraction of watermarks (Normalized correlation=1.0, Bit error ratio=0.0) against attacks like median filtering (3 × 3), Gaussian filtering, Weiner filtering, JPEG compression (Quality factor 40) and gamma correction. Even for other attacks, the extracted watermarks are not too bad in quality that they are beyond recognition.

AuSR2: Image watermarking technique for authentication and self-recovery with image texture preservation

This paper presents an image watermarking technique for authentication and self-recovery called AuSR2. The AuSR2 scheme partitions the cover image into 3 × 3 non-overlapping blocks. The watermark data is embedded into two Least Significant Bit (LSB), consisting of two authentication bits and 16 recovery bits for each block. The texture of each block is preserved in the recovery data. Thus, each tampered pixel can be recovered independently instead of using the average block. The recovery process may introduce the tamper coincidence problem, which can be solved using image inpainting. The AuSR2 implements the LSB shifting algorithm to increase the imperceptibility by 2.8%. The experimental results confirm that the AuSR2 can accurately detect the tampering area up to 100%. The AuSR2 can recover the tampered image with a PSNR value of 38.11 dB under a 10% tampering rate. The comparative analysis proves the superiority of the AuSR2 compared to the existing schemes.

Image Watermarking Technique for Digital Al-Quran based on Fibonacci Transform via DWT

Advent growth in information and communication technologies has accelerated the needs to secure digital media. Demands for digital media when on the move urged Quran readers to install the Quran mobile apps on their device. However, there is no secure mechanism to legalize its content credential. On the other hand, mobile developer finds difficulty in getting access to readily authentic Quran database sources. Malaysia government has introduced Smart Quran mobile apps without any counterfeit protection. Correspondingly, the contents are vulnerable to hacking, falsification which consequently endangering Islamic institutional prestige. There is also a lack of credible authorization institutions to verify authenticity of the digital Quran that could possibly deviate the Muslim faith by reciting falsified content and meaning. To fill the void, this paper explores the utilization of an image watermarking to preserve the Quran digital image. The study presents new blind RGB image watermarking using Fibonacci Transform via Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT) and manipulates the R component of the Al-Quran image. The second level of LL decomposition of the cover image will then be substituted by the Fibonacci-transformed watermarked version. DWT embedding is achieved through alpha blending technique. Final watermarked image is obtained once RGB conversion is performed. The efficiency of the method is assessed towards 10 samples. Verification is conducted via the extraction of the endorsed license image. The results demonstrate enhanced robustness and imperceptibility with average PSNR and SSIM of 92.13 dB and 0.99 respectively. Forgery cases of digital Quran applications are therefore tackled.

Are Social Networks Watermarking Us or Are We (Unawarely) Watermarking Ourself?

In the last decade, Social Networks (SNs) have deeply changed many aspects of society, and one of the most widespread behaviours is the sharing of pictures. However, malicious users often exploit shared pictures to create fake profiles, leading to the growth of cybercrime. Thus, keeping in mind this scenario, authorship attribution and verification through image watermarking techniques are becoming more and more important. In this paper, we firstly investigate how thirteen of the most popular SNs treat uploaded pictures in order to identify a possible implementation of image watermarking techniques by respective SNs. Second, we test the robustness of several image watermarking algorithms on these thirteen SNs. Finally, we verify whether a method based on the Photo-Response Non-Uniformity (PRNU) technique, which is usually used in digital forensic or image forgery detection activities, can be successfully used as a watermarking approach for authorship attribution and verification of pictures on SNs. The proposed method is sufficiently robust, in spite of the fact that pictures are often downgraded during the process of uploading to the SNs. Moreover, in comparison to conventional watermarking methods the proposed method can successfully pass through different SNs, solving related problems such as profile linking and fake profile detection. The results of our analysis on a real dataset of 8400 pictures show that the proposed method is more effective than other watermarking techniques and can help to address serious questions about privacy and security on SNs. Moreover, the proposed method paves the way for the definition of multi-factor online authentication mechanisms based on robust digital features.

A hybrid digital image watermarking technique based on fuzzy-BPNN and shark smell optimization

A hybrid digital image watermarking technique based on fuzzy-BPNN and shark smell optimization

Algebraic Decomposition Method for Zero Watermarking Technique in YCbCr Space

The close connection between mathematics, especially linear algebra, and computer science has greatly impacted the development of several fields, and the most important is image processing. Algebraic methods aroused interest in building digital image watermarking techniques and are used to find the features of the image to hide the watermark. This paper aims to use the algebraic Hessemberge decomposition method (HDM) for the first time as a transformation to extract the features of the image without using any popular transformation for building zero watermarking. To achieve the aim, two techniques are used, HDM with and without discrete cosine transform (DCT); both depend on the advantage of the algebraic HDM to convert the image to another domain in the YCbCr space. After applying eleven common attacks to images in both techniques, the results showed that the NC values ​​under the influence of many attacks were higher in the second technique than the NC values ​​in the first technique. In contrast, the NC values ​​for salt and pepper attack in the first technique are higher than the NC values ​​in the second technique.

A ‘Divide and Embed’ approach in a robust crypto-watermarking technique for enhancing the embedding capacity

Medical Image watermarking techniques have a major concern of addressing the issue of embedding capacity as the electronic health record (EHR) of a patient is large in size. Embedding large size watermark into medical images degrades the perceptual quality of the image which may lead to changes in morphological features of the tissues or organs. The main aim of the proposed work is to address the challenge of the trade-off between embedding capacity and image quality along with maintaining robustness. A ‘Divide and Embed’ approach is proposed to enhance the embedding capacity without affecting the image perceptibility and robustness. This approach is based on the availability of multiple medical images with a single patient’s record. The patient information used as a watermark is divided into several parts equal to the number of medical images available with a patient record and embedded separately using a region-based crypto-watermarking technique with a wavelet-based hybrid embedding process. The projected technique is tested by varying embedding capacity to check for both imperceptibility and robustness against various unintentional and intentional attacks for both CT scan and MR Images. The PSNR achieved is 77.9 dB for the higher embedding capacity of 56,548 pixels by maintaining the robustness with average BER to 0.0609 and average NC to 0.9406 after applying various attacks. Therefore, the proposed approach has enhanced the embedding capacity by maintaining the perceptual quality of the medical image as well as robustness is also consistent as compared to the other researcher’s work.

Digital watermarking image using three-level discrete wavelet transform under attacking noise

The authentication, identification, and copyright protection can be obtained by constructing the digital image watermarking technique. Watermark robustness and imperceptibility account for the capability of the hidden watermark to survive the manipulation. The proposed paper is a robust algorithm for digital image watermarking with 3-level discrete wavelet transform (DWT) with some attacks method. The 3-level DWT method was used constants α=0.01 and 0.03 as a function of how depth the watermark inserts to the host image in the insertion and extraction process. The algorithm was evaluated using 8 bits per pixel (bpp) grayscale, 1024x1024 pixels for the host image, and 256x256 pixels for the watermark image. The method is also implemented some experimental with attacks such as gaussian, salt and pepper, blurring, and compression. The algorithm is relatively acceptable of good quality, achieves low-value mean squared error (MSE), high peak signals to noise ratio (PSNR), and structural similarity index metric (SSIM) value approach to 1. It is found that the highest image quality measurements by using α=0.03 with the attacking method of salt and pepper yield MSE=0.01, PSNR=45.6 dB and SSIM=0.95, respectively.

Hash-based image watermarking technique for tamper detection and localization

Hash-based image watermarking technique for tamper detection and localization

Detection and localization for watermarking technique using LSB encryption for DICOM Image

Watermarking is an effective way of transferring hidden data from one place to another, or proving ownership of digital content. The hidden data can be text, audio, images GIF etc., the data is embedded in a cover object usually an image or a video sequence. Usually the watermarking system(s) rely on their hidden aspect, as their primary security measure, once this is established that the cover object is counting some hidden data, then it is generally possible to recover the hidden information. The author proposed an in-genuine technique for DICOM color image water marking by combining Multi Quadrant LSB with truly random mixed key cryptography. This system provides a high level of security by just the water marking technique, as it breaks the cover image into up to four quadrants, & does LSB replacement of two bytes each quadrant. The bit sequence as the quadrant sequence can be randomized to increase the randomness, use of truly random mixed key cryptography, by using a pre shared, variable length, truly random, private key, turns hidden data into noise, which can only be recovered by having the private key. Thus, the proposed technique truly diminishes the probability of recovering hidden data, even if it is detected that something is hidden in cover object.

Contourlet and Gould Transforms for Hybrid Image Watermarking in RGB Color Images

The major intention of this work is to introduce a novel hybrid image watermarking technique for RGB color images. This hybrid watermarking algorithm uses two transforms such as Contourlet and Gould transform. The Contourlet transform is used as first stage while the Gould transform is used as second stage. In the watermark embedding phase, the R, G and B channels are transformed using Contourlet transform. The bandpass directional sub band coefficients of Contourlet transformed image are then divided into sub-blocks. The sub-blocks are then transformed using Gould transform and the watermark information is embedded on the initial coefficients of each sub-blocks. After the embedding of watermark, inverse of Gould and Contourlet are taken to obtain the watermarked image. The reverse operation is performed to extract the watermark. Results obtained from attack-based experimentation for checking robustness implicate the superiority of this method in comparison with conventional methods. Better values are obtained for Embedding Rate, Structural Similarity Index Metric (SSIM) and Peak Signal to Noise Ratio (PSNR).

A Blind Robust Image Watermarking on Selected DCT Coefficients for Copyright Protection

This paper proposes a blind and robust image watermarking technique using Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) for copyright protection on color images called BRIW-DCT. Each channel of the host image is divided into non-overlapping image blocks with the size of 8×8 pixels. Each image block is transformed into a frequency domain using the DCT transformation. The watermark image is embedded into the host image by modifying the 11th to the 15th DCT coefficient. The experimental result shows that the watermarked image achieved a high PSNR value of 50.4489 dB and a high SSIM value of 0.9991. Furthermore, various attacks are performed on the watermarked image. BRIW-DCT can successfully recover the watermark image from the tampered image, which produces a high NC value of 0.7805 and a low BER value of 0.1126.

LWT-DCT based Image Watermarking Scheme using Normalized SVD

Background: Nowadays information security is one of the biggest issues of social networks. The multimedia data can be tampered with, and the attackers can then claim its ownership. Image watermarking is a technique that is used for copyright protection and authentication of multimedia. Objective: We aim to create a new and more robust image watermarking technique to prevent illegal copying, editing and distribution of media. Method : The watermarking technique proposed in this paper is non-blind and employs Lifting Wavelet Transform on the cover image to decompose the image into four coefficient matrices. Then Discrete Cosine Transform is applied which separates a selected coefficient matrix into different frequencies and later Singular Value Decomposition is applied. Singular Value Decomposition is also applied to the watermarking image and it is added to the singular matrix of the cover image which is then normalized followed by the inverse Singular Value Decomposition, inverse Discrete Cosine Transform and inverse Lifting Wavelet Transform respectively to obtain an embedded image. Normalization is proposed as an alternative to the traditional scaling factor. Results: Our technique is tested against attacks like rotation, resizing, cropping, noise addition and filtering. The performance comparison is evaluated based on Peak Signal to Noise Ratio, Structural Similarity Index Measure, and Normalized Cross-Correlation. Conclusion: The experimental results prove that the proposed method performs better than other state-of-the-art techniques and can be used to protect multimedia ownership.

Image Watermarking Approach Using LSB and Laplacian Filter

With the growth of information technologies, E-industry safety has recently become the mutual attention of education and business firms. Digital image watermarking is a technique that refers to the security of multimedia data. It is a process referred to the security and authentication of a digital image, video, and audio by embedding a watermark. Watermarking technique applies a number of variable editions to the host content, where the addition is related to embed information. In the past, researchers develop multiple simple watermarking techniques, today race is to find a region where the watermark is imperceptible and have a high payload. In this paper, an invisible image watermarking technique based on the least significant bit (LSB) and laplacian filter is proposed. The original image is divided into blocks and the laplacian filter is applied on each block. Laplacian is a derivative filter that uses the second derivate to find out the area of rapid changes in the image and the least significant bit is a technique to embed a watermark into the bit positions. Watermark is embedded on these regions which is favourable in achieving high desirable properties. This technique shows strong robustness against image processing and geometrical attacks. In evaluation with state of art methods, the proposed technique shows satisfactory progress.

Towards the development of an effective image watermarking system

AbstractDigital data communication or sharing has increased day by data because of excessive usage of the Internet. It is necessary to protect digital data from unauthorized access. However, it is very difficult to ensure the authenticity of the host data. Digital image watermarking is a significant technology for ensuring this authentication. Existing hybrid domain algorithms are not effective enough to overcome the potential challenges of watermarking techniques. Hence, the current image watermarking technology is devoted toward developing more effective methods with optimization and machine‐learning algorithms for ensuring a better trade‐off among the basic design requirements like imperceptibility, robustness, and capacity simultaneously in addition to security that can be confirmed with lightweight image encryption algorithms. In this research, a framework of standard image watermarking system for ensuring the basic design requirements is given, the existing literature is studied, and the recent trends of image watermarking techniques and their applications are also described to investigate the performance of the state‐of‐the‐art methods along with their limitations. Finally, we have concluded our study by pointing to new research directions.

A blind color image watermarking algorithm combined spatial domain and SVD

It has great significance for protecting the image copyright with color image digital watermarking technique, which needs the watermarking algorithm has high robustness, good imperceptibility and short running-time. A blind colour image watermarking algorithm combined spatial domain and singular value decomposition (SVD) is designed to protect the rightful ownership of color image in this paper. The theoretical principle combined SVD and spatial domain is first discussed and proposed in this paper. Based on the derived principle, the watermark information can be directly embedded into the maximum singular value (MSV) of the host image in the spatial domain by the new quantization index modulation with variable quantization step, and the embedded watermark information can be directly extracted from the MSV of the watermarked image block in the spatial domain with geometrical correction. The contributions of this paper include the following four points: (1) the relationship between the changed MSV of SVD and the average changed value of image pixel in the spatial domain is the first derived in this paper; (2) the presented method has the merits of both spatial-domain technique and transform-domain technique; (3) the relationships of each component of the color image are used to improve the invisibility and the geometrical correction of watermarked image is also adapted to further improve the robustness; and (4) this presented method overcomes the false-positive problem that existed in many watermarking methods based on SVD. Simulation results demonstrate the new presented color image watermarking technique has better imperceptibility, higher robustness and shorter running-time compared with some state-of-the-art methods.

Design of Digital Image Watermarking Technique with Two Stage Vector Extraction in Transform Domain

Multimedia data in various forms is now readily available because of the widespread usage of Internet technology. Unauthorized individuals abuse multimedia material, for which they should not have access to, by disseminating it over several web pages, to defraud the original copyright owners. Numerous patient records have been compromised during the surge in COVID-19 incidents. Adding a watermark to any medical or defense documents is recommended since it protects the integrity of the information. This proposed work is recognized as a new unique method since an innovative technique is being implemented. The resilience of the watermarked picture is quite crucial in the context of steganography. As a result, the emphasis of this research study is on the resilience of watermarked picture methods. Moreover, the two-stage authentication for watermarking is built with key generation in the section on robust improvement. The Fast Fourier transform (FFT) is used in the entire execution process of the suggested framework in order to make computing more straightforward. With the Singular Value Decomposition (SVD) accumulation of processes, the overall suggested architecture becomes more resilient and efficient. A numerous quality metrics are utilized to find out how well the created technique is performing in terms of evaluation. In addition, several signal processing attacks are used to assess the effectiveness of the watermarking strategy.

An Enhanced Hybrid Watermarking Method and Imaging System for Securing Medical Images

Medical image processing typically deals with the exploration of several medical image datasets for attaining an effective solution in diagnosing the affected patients. Medical image of the patients are typically stored in digital form as Electronic patient’s record (EPR), which must be dealt with utmost security and confidentiality, as the patient’s data are linked with external open platforms for future diagnosis. Medical image watermarking and encryption schemes assist in meeting the above requirements in effectively securing the patient’s image data. The ultimate objective of this research inclines towards securing medical images so as to achieve maximum effectiveness over health related areas. In this paper, an enhanced hybrid medical image watermarking and equivalent encryption strategy is typically investigated for attaining an effective solution towards medical image processing. The proposed methodology works with the integration of image watermarking algorithm together with an encryption algorithm. Image watermarking is achieved by a system based on Redundant discrete wavelet transform and Singular value decomposition. Moreover, by utilizing the property of chaotic signals for improving the integrity, a hybrid medical image watermarking technique is proposed by upgrading the Arnold cat map (ACM) with Logistic map. For image encryption, Symmetric block encryption algorithm based on Feistel structure is proposed. The efficiency of the proposed strategy is estimated in terms of Peak signal to noise ratio (PSNR), Mean square error (MSE) and Correlation coefficient (CC).