Digital Watermarking Research Articles

A review of image watermarking for identity protection and verification

Identity protection is an indispensable feature of any information security system. An identity can exist in the form of digitally written signatures, biometric information, logos, etc. It serves the vital purpose of the owners’ verification and provides them with a safety net against their imposters, so its protection is essential. Numerous security mechanisms are being developed to achieve this goal, and information embedding is prominent among all. It consists of cryptography, steganography, and watermarking; collectively, they are known as data hiding (DH) techniques. In addition to providing insight into various DH techniques, this review prominently covers the image watermarking works that have positively influenced its relevant research area. To that end, one of the main aspects of this study is its inclusive nature in reviewing watermarking techniques, via which it aims to provide a 360∘\\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \\usepackage{amsmath} \\usepackage{wasysym} \\usepackage{amsfonts} \\usepackage{amssymb} \\usepackage{amsbsy} \\usepackage{mathrsfs} \\usepackage{upgreek} \\setlength{\\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \\begin{document}$$^{\\circ }$$\\end{document} view of the watermarking technology. The main contributions of this study are summarised below.The proposed study covers more than 100 major watermarking works that have positively influenced the field and continue to do so. This approach makes the discussion effective as it allows us to pivot on the vital watermarking works that have positively influenced the research area instead of just highlighting as many existing methods as possible. Moreover, it also empowers us to provide the readers with an insight into the current research trends, the pros and cons of the state-of-the-art methods, and recommendations for future works.In addition to reviewing the state-of-the-art watermarking works, this study solves the issue of reverse-engineering the main existing watermarking methods. For instance, most recent surveys have focused primarily on reviewing as many watermarking works as possible without probing into the actual working of the techniques. This approach can leave the readership without a vital understanding of implementing or reverse-engineering a watermarking method. This issue is especially prevalent among newcomers to the watermarking field; hence, this study presents the breakdown of the well-known watermarking techniques.A new systematisation of classifying existing watermarking methods is proposed. It classifies watermarking techniques into two phases. The first phase divides watermarking methods into three categories based on the domain employed during watermark embedding. The methods are further classified based on other watermarking attributes in the following phase.

AuSR3: A new block mapping technique for image authentication and self-recovery to avoid the tamper coincidence problem

This paper proposes a new block mapping technique for image authentication and self-recovery designed to avoid the tamper coincidence problem called the AuSR3. The tamper coincidence problem can arise when modifications to an image affect the original block and its recovery data, resulting in the inability to recover the tampered region of the image. The new block mapping technique ensures that the recovery data of a block is embedded into the most distant location possible, minimizing the tamper coincidence problem. In addition, the improved LSB shifting algorithm is employed to embed the watermark data consisting of authentication and recovery data. The experimental result shows that the AuSR3 can produce high-quality watermarked images across various datasets with average PSNR values of 46.2 dB, which improved by 2.1 dB compared to the LSB replacement technique. The new block mapping technique avoids the tamper coincidence problem by up to 25% tampering rates. It contributes to the high-quality recovered image with a PSNR and SSIM value of 39.10 dB and 0.9944, respectively, on a 10% tampering rate on the USC-SIPI dataset.

An effective digital audio watermarking using a deep convolutional neural network with a search location optimization algorithm for improvement in Robustness and Imperceptibility

Watermarking is the advanced technology utilized to secure digital data by integrating ownership or copyright protection. Most of the traditional extracting processes in audio watermarking have some restrictions due to low reliability to various attacks. Hence, a deep learning-based audio watermarking system is proposed in this research to overcome the restriction in the traditional methods. The implication of the research relies on enhancing the performance of the watermarking system using the Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT) and the optimized deep learning technique. The selection of optimal embedding location is the research contribution that is carried out by the deep convolutional neural network (DCNN). The hyperparameter tuning is performed by the so-called search location optimization, which minimizes the errors in the classifier. The experimental result reveals that the proposed digital audio watermarking system provides better robustness and performance in terms of Bit Error Rate (BER), Mean Square Error (MSE), and Signal-to-noise ratio. The BER, MSE, and SNR of the proposed audio watermarking model without the noise are 0.082, 0.099, and 45.363 respectively, which is found to be better performance than the existing watermarking models.

Convolutional neural network and 2D logistic-adjusted-Chebyshev-based zero-watermarking of color images

Robust zero-watermarking is a protection of copyright approach that is both effective and distortion-free, and it has grown into a core of research on the subject of digital watermarking. This paper proposes a revolutionary zero-watermarking approach for color images using convolutional neural networks (CNN) and a 2D logistic-adjusted Chebyshev map (2D-LACM). In this algorithm, we first extracted deep feature maps from an original color image using the pre-trained VGG19. These feature maps were then fused into a featured image, and the owner's watermark sequence was incorporated using an XOR operation. Finally, 2D-LACM encrypts the copyright watermark and scrambles the binary feature matrix to ensure security. The experimental results show that the proposed algorithm performs well in terms of imperceptibility and robustness. The BER values of the extracted watermarks were below 0.0044 and the NCC values were above 0.9929, while the average PSNR values of the attacked images were 33.1537 dB. Also, it is superior to other algorithms in terms of robustness to conventional image processing and geometric attacks.

Region-Based Medical Image Watermarking Approach For Secure EPR Transmission Applied to e-Health

Region-Based Medical Image Watermarking Approach For Secure EPR Transmission Applied to e-Health

A Robust Integrated Watermarking Algorithm for Vector Geographic Data Copyright Protection

Vector geographic data play an important role in the natural resources and environment sector as well as in other location information services. This is also one of the types of data where the cost to create it is relatively large because of the difficulty in surveying, collecting, and authorizing. The rapid development of the Internet has created many advantages in the distribution, exploitation, and use of vector geographic data, but it also gives rise to many problems such as duplication, redistribution, forgery, and illegal data use. The theft on the Internet is becoming more and more sophisticated and the number of violations is increasing, showing the urgent need to research and develop an effective solution to protect the copyright of vector geographic data and prevent them from being illegally collected and used. Among the major studies and solutions, digital watermarking emerges as an effective method and is an active research area for copyright protection. Towards a good solution for copyright protection of vector geographic data, our study proposes a new algorithm with three main contributions, including: (1) generating short, pseudo-random meaningful watermarks to in-crease robustness and to enable automated as well as visual manual verifying; (2) building a uniformly distributed mapping between the vertex coordinates and the watermark bit indexes to increase the robustness of the watermarks; and (3) integrating two types of watermarks, namely, spatial domain-based watermarking and zero-watermarking to be resistant to most common attacks on geographic vector data. The algorithm works on all types of vector geographic data, including points, polylines, and polygons.

Medical image watermarking: a survey on applications, approach and performance requirement compliance

Medical image watermarking: a survey on applications, approach and performance requirement compliance

Adaptive bistable stochastic resonance based blind watermark extraction in discrete cosine transform domain

AbstractBlind watermark extraction in discrete cosine transform (DCT) domain has a wide application prospect as well as a challenging subject. The imperceptibility of watermark signal makes watermark extraction a weak signal reception issue in essence. For DCT coefficients of host image generally disobey Gaussian distribution, at which the performance of linear correlated reception is no longer optimal. Aiming at this, a novel blind watermark extraction scheme combining the uncorrelated reception with adaptive bistable stochastic resonance (ABSR) technique is proposed. First, by block DCT transformation for host image, an additive watermark embedding algorithm is introduced, in which the watermarked image can be converted to one dimensional time domain weak signal (binary watermark image) reception under additive Laplacian noise (selected DCT coefficients). On this basis, through the key technology research on quantitatively cooperative resonance relationship under Laplacian noise, the ABSR system can be implemented by bistable system parameters self‐adaptive adjustment, in which the ABSR system output signal will be enhanced rather than be weakened by random noise. Finally, the ABSR‐based watermark extraction scheme is investigated, and both the visual effect, bit error ratio performance and robustness of proposed scheme are testified to be superior to that of traditional uncorrelated extraction.

RDD-net: Robust duplicated-diffusion watermarking based on deep network

This paper proposes a novel robust duplicated-diffusion watermarking model based on deep network (RDD-net). RDD-net employs the encoder-noise-decoder structure for end-to-end training to obtain high image watermarking invisibility and robustness. Firstly, a duplicated-diffusion strategy is employed in the encoder to replicate the original watermark iteratively until all copies are diffused to the whole image so that the generalized ability in resisting various noises is obtained. Then, a channel connection technique is designed to extract inherent image features for fusing watermark for robustness by mining correlations of RGB three channels of the color image. Meanwhile, each channel is fused with watermark to increase robustness. Another attempt to improve the watermarking performance is the optimizer, which optimizes the watermark distribution by evaluating the similarities between the encoded image and the original image, as well as between the encoded image and the noised image. Our extensive experimental results demonstrate that the proposed RDD-net not only resists different noises, but also obtains better image quality and higher robustness than the existing watermarking models.

FingerChain: Copyrighted Multi-Owner Media Sharing by Introducing Asymmetric Fingerprinting Into Blockchain

Nowadays, more and more people are engaged in media creation and sharing for income. A common way to earn income is to upload media to an intermediary platform and then let the platform distribute some profits. However, intermediary platforms generally not only extract most of the profits, but also lack transparency in their operation, where owners lose direct control over the media. Nevertheless, individual sharing is not feasible for owners because each owner holds too little media to attract enough users independently. Blockchain is a solution to the above problem by gathering media from multiple owners without intermediaries. Though a lot of works have studied the use of blockchain for decentralized management of media data, many of them either did not consider sharing needs or tracing the illegal redistribution by malicious users. As for other works, most of them adopted symmetric digital watermarking in their blockchain networks, and thus fail to protect the rights of users who may be framed by malicious owners. Although asymmetric watermarking has been used by two existing works, the owner-side embedding pattern results in low owner-side efficiency. In view of this, we design a media sharing blockchain network in which the asymmetric fingerprinting (i.e., watermarking) with user-side embedding is introduced. Besides superior owner-side efficiency, our scheme also outperforms the above two ones in terms of TTP-free. Moreover, our scheme is designed to offer a user-friendly experience and support record traceability. The performance of our scheme is verified by both theoretical and experimental evaluations.

Selection of Digital Watermarking Techniques for Medical Image Security by Using the Fuzzy Analytical Hierarchy Process

Background: The watermarking technique is a security algorithm for medical images and the patient's information. Watermarking is used for maintaining the robustness, integrity, confidentiality, authentication, and complexity of medical images. Objective: The selection of medical image watermarking technique is multi-criteria decision-making and an automatic way of algorithm selection for security and privacy. However, it is difficult to select a better watermarking technique through traditional selection techniques. Methods: To deal with this problem, a multicriteria-based fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (FAHP) was proposed. This method is applied for algorithm selection for the security of medical images in healthcare. In this method, we first determined the list of criteria and alternatives, which directly affect the decision of the medical image security algorithm. Then, the proposed method was applied to the criteria and alternatives. Results: We provided the rank according to the obtained weights of the algorithm. Furthermore, the overall results and ranking of the algorithms were also presented in this article. Conclusion: Integrity was found to have the highest weight (0.509) compared to the other criteria. The weight of the other criteria, namely authentication, was 0.165, robustness was 0.151, confidentiality was 0.135, and complexity was 0.038. Thus, in terms of ranking, integrity was reported to be of the highest priority among the five criteria attributes.

WSOmark: An adaptive dual-purpose color image watermarking using white shark optimizer and Levenberg–Marquardt BPNN

WSOmark: An adaptive dual-purpose color image watermarking using white shark optimizer and Levenberg–Marquardt BPNN

Robust Texture-Aware Local Adaptive Image Watermarking With Perceptual Guarantee

Watermarking involves embedding a watermark in an image and later extracting it to prove the image’s copyright. In most cases, a complete image contains both smooth and textured regions. As a rule of thumb, the visual quality of an image with a watermark embedded in its textured regions is better than that of the same image with a watermark in smooth regions. This paper, by taking advantage of the fact, proposes a texture-aware local adaptive watermarking algorithm to maximize the watermark’s robustness while maintaining its imperceptibility. To identify textured regions in an image, we introduce the texture value, an efficient and proper metric of the richness of image texture. It combines the texture correlation of the AC coefficients, the luminance masking of the DC coefficient, and the distribution of image texture. A watermark is embedded adaptively into multiple non-overlapping textured regions of an image under the specified SSIM condition. Its adaptiveness comes from a novel texture-aware adaptive parameter model derived by multivariate regression analysis. Correct extraction of watermarks from multiple textured regions can be done by the cooperation of embedding and extraction strategies, with the assistance of RS-based watermark coding model. They allow for greater robustness, faster extraction, and adjustable watermark capacity. The simulation experiments on 100 images demonstrate that our proposed algorithm outperforms state-of-the-art algorithms with respect to imperceptibility, robustness, and adaptability.

Optimizing Robustness and Invisibility in Digital Image Watermarking: A SVM-Based Multi-Level DWT and SVD Approach

This research introduces a new digital image watermarking approach that utilizes discrete wave transformation (DWT), Support vector machine, and singular value decomposition. The method improves robustness under various assault situations by using the SVM classifier during watermark extraction. Multi-level DWT splits the host picture into sub-bands when embedding, and the coefficients are used as input for SVM. After SVD, the scaling factor embeds the watermark. Comparing the proposed approach to existing research under various attacks, the experimental findings demonstrate that it strikes an equilibrium between robustness and invisibility for watermarks of varying sizes. Support Vector Machine is a contemporary category of machine learning techniques that is extensively employed for the purpose of solving classification problems.

Digital Watermarking, Methodology, Techniques, and Attacks: A Review

The use of multimedia technology is growing every day, and it is difficult and time-consuming to provide allowed data while preventing secret information from being used without authorization. The material that has been watermarked can only be accessed by authorized users. Digital watermarking is a popular method for protecting digital data. The embedding of secret data into actual information is the subject of digital watermarking. This paper examines watermarking techniques, methodologies, and attacks, as well as the development of watermarking digital images stored in both the spatial and frequency domains.

Robust PDF Watermarking against Print-Scan Attack.

Portable document format (PDF) files are widely used in file transmission, exchange, and circulation because of their platform independence, small size, good browsing quality, and the ability to place hyperlinks. However, their security issues are also more thorny. It is common to distribute printed PDF files to different groups and individuals after printing. However, most PDF watermarking algorithms currently cannot resist print-scan attacks, making it difficult to apply them in leak tracing of both paper and scanned versions of PDF documents. To tackle this issue, we propose an invisible digital watermarking technology based on modifying the edge pixels of text strokes to hide information in PDFs, which achieves high robustness to print-scan attacks. Moreover, it cannot be detected by human perception systems. This method focuses on the representation of text by embedding watermarks by changing the features of the text to ensure that changes in these features can be reflected in the scanned PDF after printing. We first segment each text line into two sub-blocks, then select the row of pixels with the most black pixels, and flip the edge pixels closest to this row. This method requires the participation of original PDF documents in detection. The experimental results show that all peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) values of our proposed method exceed 32 dB, which indicates satisfactory invisibility. Meanwhile, this method can extract the hidden information with 100% accuracy under the JPEG compression attack, and has high robustness against noise attacks and print-scan attacks. In the case of no attacks, the watermark can be recovered without any loss. In terms of practical applications, our method can be applied in the practical leak tracing of official paper documents after distribution.

A Medical Image Watermarking System Based on Redundant Wavelets for Secure Transmission in Telemedicine Applications

A Medical Image Watermarking System Based on Redundant Wavelets for Secure Transmission in Telemedicine Applications

Medical image watermarking based on novel encoding for EHR and fusion based morphological watershed segmentation algorithm for medical images

Medical image watermarking based on novel encoding for EHR and fusion based morphological watershed segmentation algorithm for medical images

Research on Robust Digital Watermarking Based on Reversible Information Hiding

The development of modern Internet communication technology and the popularization of multimedia technology have brought convenience to the sharing and storage of multimedia information such as images, videos, and audio. However, at the same time, it has brought about the problem of copyright theft of multimedia information, causing serious information security risks. Digital watermarking technology embeds copyright information in multimedia information in an invisible way, which can effectively realize copyright protection and traceability of infringement. Aiming at the problem that the existing learning model-based methods cannot fully extract and fuse the features of carrier images and watermark images, a robust digital watermarking method based on reversible information hiding is proposed. First, a watermark embedding model based on reversible information hiding is established, and the features of the download volume image and the watermark image in different dimensions are fully extracted and fused to generate a dense image with excellent visual quality. Then, a watermark extraction model based on reversible information hiding is established, and a noise layer is added between the embedding and the extraction model, and the attacked dense image is input to the watermark extraction model to extract the watermark. Under the constraint of the loss function, the network model learns to embed watermark information in the area that is more robust to the attack and is not easy to cause visual quality degradation, so as to optimize the comprehensive performance of the method. Experimental results show that the proposed method effectively improves the imperceptibility and robustness.

Enabling secure image transmission in unmanned aerial vehicle using digital image watermarking with H-Grey optimization

Drone technology, also known as Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), has advanced rapidly in the last decade owing to the huge number of users. This approach has an immense opportunity in areas like healthcare, agriculture, and forestry. However, the transmission of digital images via drone technology is associated with vulnerabilities and risks, due to a lack of efficient security solutions. Digital Image Watermarking (DIW) has emerged as a viable solution for digital image transmission in UAV applications. However, achieving robustness, security, and imperceptibility in a watermarking system at the same time is a difficult task. To address the aforementioned concerns, this paper proposes a secure digital image watermarking scheme in the hybrid DWT-SVD domain. The scaling factor is chosen adaptively from the hybrid Harmony-Grey Wolf (H-Grey) optimization algorithm to maintain a balance between imperceptibility and robustness. In addition, a novel symmetric cryptographic-based four-level encryption approach PSMD (Partitioning, Substituting, Merging, Division) is proposed to address UAV image security concerns by using Fibonacci and prime number series to generate two random keys. The proposed encryption scheme provides high security at low computational cost. The experimental results show that the visual quality and robustness are both high (Avg. PSNR = 41.27 dB and Avg. SSIM = 0.99, NC = 0.99, and BER = 0.0008 calculated for 100 images). The subjective and objective experimental analysis indicates that the proposed encryption scheme is highly secure and the computational cost is also low. The average embedding and extraction time is 0.25 s and 0.09 s It is resistant to various image processing attacks. A comparison with some of the most recent popular schemes confirms the scheme’s effectiveness. The presented DIW can be used for copyright protection, UAV image transmission applications, military applications, and other purposes.