Watermark Logo Research Articles

A robust DCT-2DLDA watermark for color images

A blind watermarking algorithm is proposed, which is based on the Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) method. It uses Two-Dimensional Linear Discriminant Analysis (2DLDA) watermark scheme for copyright protection. During the embedding process, the color image is converted into the YIQ color space. The quadrature chrominance component is transformed into frequency domain and it uses DCT method. Then, two binary watermarks for reference and logo are added to particular bits of the AC coefficients. During the extraction process, the logo watermark is extracted using matrix-based 2DLDA based on DCT method. By embedding the training data and using a matrix-based 2DLDA scheme, we do not need all the embedded information. The numbers of training samples for each class are small; the training covariance matrices are directly computed from 2D image samples by using 2DLDA. This ensures the efficient and the robustness of watermark extraction. Experimental results demonstrate that the differences between the watermarked image and the original image are indistinguishable. The proposed method is effectively resist common image processing attacks.

Reversible Image Watermarking for Health Informatics Systems Using Distortion Compensation in Wavelet Domain.

Reversible image watermarking guaranties restoration of both original cover and watermark logo from the watermarked image. Capacity and distortion of the image under reversible watermarking are two important parameters. In this study, a reversible watermarking is investigated by focusing on increasing the embedding capacity and reducing the distortion in medical images. We use integer wavelet transform for embedding one bit of watermark in a transform coefficient. We devise a novel approach that when a coefficient is modified in one iteration, the produced distortion is compensated in the next iteration. This distortion compensation method would result in low distortion rate. The proposed method is tested on four types of medical images including MRI of the brain, cardiac MRI, MRI of breast and intestinal polyp images. The maximum capacity of 1.5 BPP is obtained by using a one-level wavelet transform. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method is superior to the stateof-the-art works in terms of capacity and distortion.

Robust Video Watermarking of Hybrid Based Techniques

This paper adopted a new video watermarking scheme based on hybrid transforms to achieve the watermarking requirements, that is, robustness, imperceptibility, and security. Where In our system first of all, the original video will be divided into frames to transform it using the Slantlet Transform into four sub-bands (i.e., LL, LH, HL, and HH). Secondly, The HL sub-band will be chosen for further decomposition using Contourlet Transform (CT), and then the low sub-band of CT will be selected to decompose it to fixed size non overlapping blocks to employ the DCT (Discrete Cosine Transform) on each block. lastly, to improve the security and robustness, the watermark logo is scrambled using AT(Arnold transformation ) as a prelude to embed it’s on the each transformed non-overlapping blocks. Experimental results show that the proposed system achieves good imperceptibility and high resistance against various attacks.

Using dynamic pixel value mapping method to construct visible and reversible image watermarking scheme

A reversible and visible image watermarking scheme extracts a visibly embedded binary watermark image and recovers the original cover image. This paper presents a reversible and visible image watermarking scheme that embeds visible watermarks into a part of the cover image, called the embedded region R, and embeds required binary strings into the whole image through the conventional difference-expansion method. The size of the embedded visible watermark is determined by the coefficient k; a large k value leads to a large embedded region for the visible watermark. The embedded region R is first segmented to non-overlapped k×k blocks, and each block is related to one bit of the watermark image. For those blocks that are related to the logo bits of the watermark image, these k×k blocks are adjusted by the proposed dynamic pixel value mapping method for highly visual detection. The binary bit string S, composed of the binary watermark image and LSB bits of the logo watermark bits’ corresponding k×k blocks, is embedded into the cover image using the conventional difference-expansion method. Experimental results show that the watermark is clearly embedded into the embedded region R and that the distortion of the reversible embedding is limited.

Attack resistant watermarking technique based on fast curvelet transform and Robust Principal Component Analysis

Watermarking is a technique which embeds the copyright information/identifier to provide authenticity in robust and imperceptible manner. In this paper, a hybrid watermarking technique is proposed based on combination of Fast Curvelet Tansform (FCT), Robust Principal Component Analysis (RPCA) and Singular Value Decomposition (SVD). The gray-scale watermark logo is scrambled using Generalized Arnold Transform (GAT) to enhance the robustness and security. The original image is decomposed to low rank and sparse components using RPCA; the curvelet coefficients are obtained using FCT via Unequally-Spaced Fast Fourier Transforms (USFFT) to embed the processed watermark using SVD into the color image. In curvelet transform, fewer coefficients contain the most energy, also giving optimally sparse representation of the significant image features and edges that helps in efficient recovery of the embedded watermark even after severe image degradation. The robustness and imperceptibility of the proposed technique is verified against a variety of processing operations (noise, filtering) and geometric attacks (crop, resize, projection etc.). The quantitative and visual results reveal that the watermarking technique proposed is more efficient and provides high tolerance against different geometric and image processing attacks.

A robust embedding and blind extraction of image watermarking based on discrete wavelet transform

In this study, a new algorithm that can be used for copyright protection is proposed for the embedding and detection of a watermark in the domain of discrete wavelet transform (DWT). The elements of the logo watermark are embedded directly to the three-level DWT decomposed subbands. In addition to that, the scheme is considered as a completely blind scheme for both host image and watermark. Two kinds of security attacks have also been considered which confirms the security of the scheme. The experimental results and computer simulation of the proposed scheme have shown that the proposed approach has the desired properties such as invisibility, blind detection, and robustness against various geometrical and non-geometrical attacks.

A RONI Based Visible Watermarking Approach for Medical Image Authentication.

Nowadays medical data in terms of image files are often exchanged between different hospitals for use in telemedicine and diagnosis. Visible watermarking being extensively used for Intellectual Property identification of such medical images, leads to serious issues if failed to identify proper regions for watermark insertion. In this paper, the Region of Non-Interest (RONI) based visible watermarking for medical image authentication is proposed. In this technique, to RONI of the cover medical image is first identified using Human Visual System (HVS) model. Later, watermark logo is visibly inserted into RONI of the cover medical image to get watermarked medical image. Finally, the watermarked medical image is compared with the original medical image for measurement of imperceptibility and authenticity of proposed scheme. The experimental results showed that this proposed scheme reduces the computational complexity and improves the PSNR when compared to many existing schemes.

LWT–DSR based new robust framework for watermark extraction under intentional attack conditions

This paper proposes a new watermarking approach using dynamic stochastic resonance (DSR) based tuning operation to extract the watermark logo from the watermarked image that has undergone different intentional and signal processing attacks. This method is intended to provide remedies from the shortcomings of the technique proposed by Lin et al. (2008), and invalidates the effect of intentional attacks recently designed by Meerwald et al. (2009). The algorithm incorporates three level image decomposition using lifting wavelet transform (LWT) and low-pass subband is utilized for data hiding purpose. Watermark bits are embedded into the blocks of non-overlapped wavelet coefficients of the cover image by quantizing the two maximum coefficients of the corresponding block. In watermark extraction process, the DSR is applied by performing the tuning operation on coefficient blocks of attacked watermarked image. It is a parameter dependent approach that enhances the performance of watermark extraction, where the parameters of DSR inherently depend on the image properties such as standard deviation or variance. As far as security is concerned, the randomization of wavelet coefficients, blocks, and watermark bits helps the framework to be more secure. The proposed technique is also examined against multiple watermarking attack and successfully proves its authenticity and ownership. Comparison of the proposed technique with recent techniques shows remarkable improvement in terms of robustness and security against various intentional, signal processing, and geometrical attacks.

An indirect watermark hiding in discrete cosine transform-singular value decomposition domain for copyright protection.

Digital image watermarking has emerged as a promising solution for copyright protection. In this paper, a discrete cosine transform (DCT) and singular value decomposition (SVD) based hybrid robust image watermarking method using Arnold scrambling is proposed and simulated to protect the copyright of natural images. In this proposed scheme, before embedding, watermark is scrambled with Arnold scrambling. Then, the greyscale cover image and encrypted watermark logo are decomposed into non-overlapping blocks and subsequently some selected image blocks are transformed into the DCT domain for inserting the watermark blocks permanently. For better imperceptibility and effectiveness, in this proposed algorithm, watermark image blocks are embedded into singular values of selected blocks by multiplying with a feasible scaling factor. Simulation result demonstrates that robustness is achieved by recovering satisfactory watermark data from the reconstructed cover image after applying common geometric transformation attacks (such as rotation, flip operation, cropping, scaling, shearing and deletion of lines or columns operation), common enhancement technique attacks (such as low-pass filtering, histogram equalization, sharpening, gamma correction, noise addition) and jpeg compression attacks.

Robust video watermarking scheme using high efficiency video coding attack

In order to make a balance between robustness and watermark payload data, an efficient video watermarking scheme is proposed. It is aimed to design and implementing a robust video watermarking scheme based on High Efficiency Video Coding as an attack tool. HEVC which is an emerging video compression standard that provides better compression performance as compared to its predecessor, i.e. H.264/AVC. An important level of security is added through a robust watermarking scheme which is used for hiding ownership profile inside the video. This security protects the copyright protection of the digital video contents. The embedding process selects either minimum values from sorted data or maximum value according to the length of the watermark (text and logo in this research). Test results show that for a high definition video quality (1 K, 2 K and 4 K), the proposed scheme has a high robustness when the watermark logo data is embedded in a low frequency data.

ROBUST WATERMARKING TECHNIQUE USING DIFFERENT WAVELET DECOMPOSITION LEVELS FOR SIGNATURE IMAGE PROTECTION

This paper proposed a non-blind watermarking technique based on different wavelet decomposition levels for biometric image protection. In this technique, a biometric image is used as a watermark instead of a standard image, logo or random noise pattern type watermark. For watermark embedding, the original host image and the watermark biometric image are transformed into various levels of wavelet coefficients. The watermark biometric image is embedded into the host image by modifying the values of the wavelet coefficients of the host image using the values of wavelet coefficients of the watermark biometric image. Experimental results demonstrated that the proposed technique was able to withstand various watermarking attacks. The novelty of the proposed technique is that it is used to transform coefficients of the watermark biometric image instead of the Pseudo Noise sequences or any other feature extraction technique.

A robust blind hybrid image watermarking scheme in RDWT-DCT domain using Arnold scrambling

To compromise between imperceptibility and robustness property of robust image watermarking technique, a RDWT-DCT based blind image watermarking scheme using Arnold scrambling is presented in this paper. Firstly, RDWT (Redundant Discrete Wavelet Transform) is applied to each gray scale cover image block after the image is decomposed into fixed size non overlapping blocks. Secondly, the binary watermark logo is encrypted by Arnold chaotic map and reshaped to a sequence to improve the security of the logo. In the subsequent step, DCT (Discrete Cosine Transform) is employed on each LH subband of the non-overlapping host image block. Finally, after zigzag scanning of each DCT block a binary bit of watermark is embedded into each block by adjusting some middle significant AC coefficients using repetition code. Experimental results show that robustness is achieved by recovering satisfactory watermark data from the reconstructed cover image after applying common geometric transformation attacks (like rotation, cropping, scaling, shearing and deletion of lines or column operation etc.), common enhancement technique attacks (like lowpass filtering, histogram equalization, sharpening, gamma correction, noise addition etc.) and JPEG compression attacks. The proposed scheme is also tested to verify the robustness performance against standard benchmark software "Checkmark" and satisfactory results are achieved against the Checkmark attacks such as Hard and Soft Thresholding, Template Removal, Warping, Dithering, Remodulation and Downsampling/Upsampling etc.

An Invisible Logo Watermarking Using Arnold Transform

Digital watermarking is the process of hiding information into the digital content. The method of embedding a smaller logo image into the host image is called logo watermarking. The system proposes an invisible and secure watermarking. The key entered initially determine the location of embedding and thus classified the host image to white and black textured regions. The logo image is then transformed using Arnold transform. Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT) technique is employed for embedding the transformed logo into the white textured regions. Watermark extraction is done by entering the same key which was already entered during embedding. The system is secure and the logo is imperceptible within the host image. Finally for analysis, PSNR value has been used as a metric for determining the quality of the recovered image.

Block‐based discrete wavelet transform‐singular value decomposition image watermarking scheme using human visual system characteristics

Digital watermarking has been suggested as a way to achieve digital protection. The aim of digital watermarking is to insert the secret data into the image without significantly affecting the visual quality. This study presents a robust block-based image watermarking scheme based on the singular value decomposition (SVD) and human visual system in the discrete wavelet transform (DWT) domain. The proposed method is considered to be a block-based scheme that utilises the entropy and edge entropy as HVS characteristics for the selection of significant blocks to embed the watermark, which is a binary watermark logo. The blocks of the lowest entropy values and edge entropy values are selected as the best regions to insert the watermark. After the first level of DWT decomposition, the SVD is performed on the low-low sub-band to modify several elements in its U matrix according to predefined conditions. The experimental results of the proposed scheme showed high imperceptibility and high robustness against all image processing attacks and several geometrical attacks using examples of standard and real images. Furthermore, the proposed scheme outperformed several previous schemes in terms of imperceptibility and robustness. The security issue is improved by encrypting a portion of the important information using Advanced Standard Encryption a key size of 192-bits (AES-192).

English

Nowadays, one of the popular multimedia data exchanged in the internet is Digital video. Protection requires in requires enhancing safety in commercial activity on the internet as well as media. A widely interesting research is the 2D Barcode with a digital watermark is in the field of security. By using the Quick Response (QR) Code technique, in this paper we recommend a video watermarking with text data. Via a robust video watermarking scheme the QR Code is prepared to be watermarked based on the SVD (singular value decomposition) and DWT (Discrete Wavelet Transform). SVD is an attractive arithmetical transform for watermarking applications. In addition to that logo (or) watermark gives the authorized ownership of video document. For the cover I-frame the SVD is applied. With logo (or) watermark there fused the extracted diagonal value. For SVD cover image and QR code image the SVD is applied. The watermarked image inverse transform and add the frame into video, to authorized customers this watermarked videofile sends. In the reverse process for authorized ownership check the logo and QR code. Acceptable imperceptibility achieved by these experimental results and in video processing there certain robustness.

An efficient and secure robust watermarking scheme for document images using Integer wavelets and block coding of binary watermarks

A novel, efficient and robust watermarking scheme for protection of document image contents is proposed in this work. An integer wavelet-based watermarking scheme for embedding the compressed version of the binary watermark logo has been developed for robust watermarking. At the sender side, the source document image is divided into empty and non-empty segments depending on the absence or presence of the information. Watermarking is applied for non-empty segments and thus the amount of embedding capacity is reduced. A binary watermark logo is compressed using binary block coding technique of appropriate block-size. A level-2 integer wavelet transformation is applied on the non-empty segment of the source document image. LL-sub-band of level-2 of the transformed image is subdivided into blocks of uniform size and compressed watermark bitstream is embedded into it. The compressed watermark is redundantly embedded into blocks using quantization technique. Thus, multiple copies of compressed watermark are available and each block of the source document image segment need not include the entire compressed watermark stream. At the receiver side, the extracted segments from each set of blocks are merged to obtain a single extracted bitstream. The bitstream is further decoded to get the binary watermark. The extracted and embedded watermarks are compared and authentication decision is taken based on majority voting technique. Based on the quantization step size, size of the logo and the level of wavelet transform, the watermarks are extracted without accessing the original image. The experimental results show that the proposed technique is highly robust. The performance of the proposed approach is measured in parameters Peak Signal to Noise Ratio (PSNR) and Normalized Correlation Coefficient (NCC). Results show that the proposed approach is better than the existing methods. In the proposed scheme for decompression of watermark, the level of block coding technique is the key, which provides an additional layer of security.

Digital Image Watermarking via Adaptive Logo Texturization.

Grayscale logo watermarking is a quite well-developed area of digital image watermarking which seeks to embed into the host image another smaller logo image. The key advantage of such an approach is the ability to visually analyze the extracted logo for rapid visual authentication and other visual tasks. However, logos pose new challenges for invisible watermarking applications which need to keep the watermark imperceptible within the host image while simultaneously maintaining robustness to attacks. This paper presents an algorithm for invisible grayscale logo watermarking that operates via adaptive texturization of the logo. The central idea of our approach is to recast the watermarking task into a texture similarity task. We first separate the host image into sufficiently textured and poorly textured regions. Next, for textured regions, we transform the logo into a visually similar texture via the Arnold transform and one lossless rotation; whereas for poorly textured regions, we use only a lossless rotation. The iteration for the Arnold transform and the angle of lossless rotation are determined by a model of visual texture similarity. Finally, for each region, we embed the transformed logo into that region via a standard wavelet-based embedding scheme. We employ a multistep extraction stage, in which an affine parameter estimation is first performed to compensate for possible geometrical transformations. Testing with multiple logos on a database of host images and under a variety of attacks demonstrates that the proposed algorithm yields better overall performance than competing methods.

Visible watermarking based on importance and just noticeable distortion of image regions

Visible watermarking is the process of embedding data (watermark) into a multimedia object (video/image) such that the embedded watermark is perceptible to a human observer. Many times, visible watermarks occlude important portion of multimedia objects. This paper introduces a visible watermarking algorithm to embed a binary logo watermark at N non-overlapping positions in an image such that important portions of the image are not occluded. The important portions are found through visual saliency computation or available human eye fixation density maps. In the proposed visible watermarking, just noticeable distortion is used to adaptively filter the watermark embedding energy based on the image content. A mathematical model in terms of information-content-weighted-structural-similarity-index and visual importance is proposed to find optimal watermark embedding strength. We tested the algorithm on several color images of different sizes and on several binary watermarks of different sizes and found the results to be very promising as per the requirements in visible watermarking. When compared to the state-of-the-art, we also found that the proposed technique does better in not hiding the details of any test image.

A robust and efficient image watermarking scheme based on Lagrangian SVR and lifting wavelet transform

In this paper, an efficient image watermarking scheme based on Lagrangian support vector regression (LSVR) and lifting wavelet transform (LWT) is proposed to balance the trade-off between imperceptibility and robustness. LWT is faster and efficient implementation of traditional wavelet transform and LSVR has faster learning speed and high generalization capability compared to classical support vector regression. Combination of LWT and LSVR based image watermarking not only show imperceptibility and robustness but also reduces the time complexity. First the image is decomposed into four subbands using one level LWT and low frequency subband (approximate image) is partitioned into non overlapping blocks. Selected blocks based on correlation of wavelet coefficients are used to embed the binary watermark logo. For each selected block, significant wavelet coefficient is used as target to LSVR and its neighboring coefficients (feature vector) act as input to LSVR. The security of the watermark is achieved by applying Arnold transformation to original watermark. The scrambled watermark bit is embedded by comparing the output (predicted value) of LSVR of each selected block and the actual target value. The good learning capability and high generalization property of LSVR against noisy datasets provides the successful extraction of watermark against several image processing attacks: median filtering, average filtering, addition of Gaussian noise, salt and pepper noise, contrast enhancement, blurring, scaling, cropping and rotation. Experimental results show that the proposed scheme gives significant improvement in imperceptibility and robustness compared to the state-of-art techniques.

A duple watermarking strategy for multi-channel quantum images

Utilizing a stockpile of efficient transformations consisting of channel of interest, channel swapping, and quantum Fourier transforms, a duple watermarking strategy on multi-channel quantum images is proposed. It embeds the watermark image both into the spatial domain and the frequency domain of the multi-channel quantum carrier image, while also providing a quantum measurement-based algorithm to generate an unknown key that is used to protect the color information, which accompanies another key that is mainly used to scramble the spatial content of the watermark image in order to further safeguard the copyright of the carrier image. Simulation-based experiments using a watermark logo and nine building images as watermark image and carrier images, respectively, offer a duple protection for the copyright of carrier images in terms of the visible quality of the watermarked images. The proposed stratagem advances available literature in the quantum watermarking research field and sets the stage for the applications aimed at quantum data protection.