Non-blind Watermarking Scheme Research Articles

An Optimized Hybrid Algorithm for Blind Watermarking Scheme Using Singular Value Decomposition in RDWT-DCT Domain

Watermarking is a technique which offers more robustness and good imperceptibility. Even if the algorithmic principle is public or the existence of hidden information is known, it is difficult to attacker to destroy the embedded watermark without degrading the watermarked media severely. In existence, non-blind watermarking (NBW) schemes and different combinations of techniques are proposed for watermarking procedure. But these methods failed to provide the good imperceptibility, lack of robustness and embedding capacity standards, respectively. Thus, to overcome this problem, a hybrid algorithm for blind watermarking (BW) is proposed, which utilizes redundant discrete wavelet transform (RDWT), discrete cosine transform (DCT) and singular value decomposition (SVD) together to have the advantages of all three. In addition, optimization of proposed RDWT-DCT-SVD is obtained using a new bio-inspired algorithm called Porcellio Scaber algorithm (PSA). Thus, the visual perception of extracted watermark image also good enough by maintaining the robustness against various image attacks. Experiments are carried out to test the proposed BW algorithm and it is successful under various geometrical and non-geometrical attacks. Finally, the performances of proposed BW using RDWT-DCT-SVD with PSA optimization is compared with various existing BW approaches in terms of various quality metrics like peak signal to noise ratio (PSNR), structural similarity (SSIM) index, root mean square error (RMSE) and normalized correlation coefficient (NCC).

A low-frequency construction watermarking based on histogram

The robust watermarking scheme has very broad application scenarios. For robust watermarking methods, the transform domain based watermarking algorithms are popular. Indeed, these algorithms have strong robustness, but the visual effects may be affected. In order to balance the robustness and imperceptibility, a histogram based watermarking scheme is proposed. In this scheme, in order to enhance the robustness and imperceptibility, the low-frequency construction method (LFCM) is proposed. In LFCM, the most suitable pixels for modifications are selected by calculating the weights of pixels at different positions, and these pixels will be modified in the histogram based embedding process. After the modification, the low-frequency of the image will enhance, and the robustness of the watermarking will enhance at the same time. Experiment results show that the proposed scheme can resist compression, scaling, noise, and median blur attacks, and can resist rotation attacks to a certain extent. The proposed scheme is a non-blind watermarking scheme, and non-blind watermarking scheme is feasible when this scheme has good performance.

Digital watermarking scheme for colour remote sensing image based on quaternion wavelet transform and tensor decomposition

Digital watermarking is important for protecting the intellectual property of remote sensing images. Unlike watermarking in ordinary colour images, in colour remote sensing images, watermarking has an important requirement: robustness. In this paper, a robust nonblind watermarking scheme for colour remote sensing images, which considers both frequency and statistical pattern features, is constructed based on the quaternion wavelet transform (QWT) and tensor decomposition. Using the QWT, not only the abundant phase information can be used to preserve detailed host image features to improve the imperceptibility of the watermark, but also the frequency coefficients of the host image can provide a stable position to embed the watermark. To further strengthen the robustness, the global statistical feature structure acquired through the tensor Tucker decomposition is employed to distribute the watermark's energy among different colour bands. Because both the QWT frequency coefficients and the tensor decomposition global statistical feature structure are highly stable against external distortion, their integration yields the proposed scheme, which is robust to many image manipulations. A simulation experiment shows that our method can balance the trade‐off between imperceptibility and robustness and that it is more robust than the traditional QWT and discrete wavelet transform (DWT) methods under many different types of image manipulations.

Robust Invisible Digital Image Watermarking Using Hybrid Scheme

Digital image watermarking is a technique to protect copyright of the image owner in the world of digital communication, and robustness is the major property to be addressed effectively. We propose an invisible hybrid watermarking scheme which is composed of blind and non-blind watermarking techniques. First, blind scheme is used as inner watermarking scheme and then non-blind watermarking scheme as outer watermarking scheme. A secret binary image is taken as a watermark and is embedded in an inner cover image using discrete wavelet transformation (DWT) with the help of the blind watermarking scheme in association with predefined binary digit sequence block and gain factor $${\varvec{\upalpha }}$$ to get inner watermarked image. Then, this inner watermarked image is embedded into an outer cover image using DWT and singular value decomposition by non-blind watermarking technique to get hybrid watermarked image. On the contrary, to extract the secret binary image, first non-blind watermark extraction and then blind watermark extraction techniques are used. From the experimental results, it is shown that this hybrid watermarking approach is robust against—rotation, JPEG compression, salt and pepper noise, Gaussian noise, speckle noise and Poisson noise.

A Robust Watermarking Scheme in YCbCr Color Space Based on Channel Coding

The rapid development of big data and cloud computing technologies greatly accelerate the spreading and utilization of images and videos. The copyright protection for images and videos is becoming increasingly serious. In this paper, we proposed the robust non-blind watermarking schemes in YCbCr color space based on channel coding. The source watermark image is encoded and singular value decomposed. Subsequently, the singular value matrixes are embedded into the Y, Cb, and Cr components of the host image after four-level discrete wavelet transform (DWT). The embedding factor for each component is calculated based on the just-noticeable distortion and the singular vectors of HL subband of DWT. The peak signal-to-noise ratio of the watermarked image and the normalized correlation coefficient of the extracted watermark are investigated. It is shown that the proposed channel coding-based schemes can achieve near exact watermark recovery against all kinds of attacks. Considering both robustness and transparency, the convolutional code-based additive embedding scheme is optimal, which can also achieve good performance for video watermarking after extension.

An HVS Inspired Robust Non-blind Watermarking Scheme in YCbCr Color Space

Digital Watermarking is an important tool for copyright protection. A good quality watermarking scheme should provide both perceptual transparency as well as robustness against attacks. Many efficient schemes exist for grayscale image watermarking, but relatively less attention has been paid to watermarking for color images. Moreover, the existing works do not provide adequate justification for the possible choice of color space. In this paper, justification is provided for the choice of YCbCr color space for watermark embedding. A human visual system (HVS)-inspired image-adaptive non-blind watermarking scheme in the YCbCr space has subsequently been proposed. This new algorithm has been referred to as the Additive Embedding Scheme (AES). It comprises of a modified watermarking strength parameter ([Formula: see text]), in combination with the discrete wavelet transform and singular value decomposition (DWT-SVD). Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed watermarking scheme in YCbCr color space provides better perceptual quality as well as robustness against attacks as compared to existing schemes. We have further improvised the aforementioned scheme to come up with a Multiplicative Embedding Scheme (MES) for additional robustness against a special type of attack, viz. the Singular Value Exchange Attack.

Imperceptible non-blind watermarking and robustness against tone mapping operation attacks for high dynamic range images

High dynamic range (HDR) imaging has experienced a widespread during the recent years through various technologies, including social network applications, which necessitates robust watermarking schemes to protect the copyright and image authentication. As watermarked high dynamic range images need to be tone mapped for visualization purposes on the traditional low dynamic range displays, the associated tone mapping operators (TMOs) can be deemed inevitable attacks. In this paper, we show that the state-of-the-art non-blind watermarking algorithms are vulnerable to the TMO’s attacks. Based on the results of our investigation, we propose an improved non-blind watermarking method and extensively evaluate with state-of-the-art non-blind watermarking schemes using a broad set of TMOs’ attacks. The proposed method first divides a given host image into patches, each of which is then decomposed using the discrete wavelet transform (DWT). The high-high sub-band of DWT is then passed through chirp-z transformation, followed by QR decomposition. The proposed solution embeds the watermark into each of value of the upper triangular matrix obtained from QR decomposition. The efficiency of the proposed embedding scheme is evaluated by applying 14 different TMOs on the watermarked image and extracting the embedded watermark. The average of 100 normalized correlation values for each image is then taken into account as a criterion for comparison, which demonstrates the noticeably stronger performance of the proposed watermarking scheme with respect to the state-of-the-art non-blind watermarking alternatives.

Non-blind digital watermarking with enhanced image embedding capacity using DMeyer wavelet decomposition, SVD, and DFT

Amongst the requirements of digital color image watermarking–capacity is the major component to be addressed effectively. To address the same we proposed a method for inserting a color image into another color image of same size using non-blind watermarking scheme. From this method we achieved reasonably good perceptual similarity by measuring acceptable peak signal to noise ratio (PSNR) and structural similarity (SSIM) index. The method uses DMeyer single level discrete wavelet transformation (DWT) to get approximation coefficients-where most of the image information is stored, discrete Fourier transformation (DFT) is used to get set of components which are sufficient to describe the whole image and singular value decomposition (SVD) to get reliable orthogonal matrix of computationally sustainable components of the transformed image. The method is robust against attacks like–rotation, cropping, JPEG compression and for noises–salt and pepper, gaussian, speckle.

Image watermarking in real oriented wavelet transform domain

In this paper, we propose blind and non-blind watermarking schemes in the real oriented wavelet transform (ROWT) domain. The ROWT, which is a member of the dual tree complex wavelet transform (DTCWT) family, is chosen as a watermarking domain since the DTCWT has recently emerged as an important new image processing tool. Existing watermarking schemes based on the DTCWT usually lack high embedding capacity. This is mainly due to the fact that the left inverse and the right inverse of the DTCWT (including the ROWT) are not equal. We have observed a relation when the ROWT follows its left inverse, and have used this relation to develop two watermarking schemes in the ROWT domain. Experimental results show that the proposed ROWT based watermarking schemes not only have a much higher capacity than the existing DTCWT based watermarking schemes, but are also robust to various image modification operations such as cropping, Gaussian filter, Gaussian noise, and salt and pepper noise.

Audio Watermarking Scheme Using IMFs and HHT for Forensic Applications

Audio signals and applications are numerous and ubiquitous. Most of these applications especially those on the Internet require authentication and proof(s) of ownership. There are several efficient methods in the literature address these crucial and critical concerns. In this paper, the authors present a new non-blind audio watermarking scheme for forensic audio authentication and proof of ownership. The proposed scheme is based on empirical mode decomposition and Hilbert Haung Transformation (HHT). In this method, the audio signal is decomposed into frames of 1024 sample each. These frames are further decomposed into its several mono-component signals called Intrinsic Mode Functions (IMF). These Intrinsic Mode Functions will serve as the addressee for the watermark. In this research, the chosen watermark is a pseudo random number generated by Matlab-7, which is added to the highest and lowest IMFs of each frame of the decomposed signal. This is done to accommodate for time scale modification attacks as well as MP3 compression respectively. Experimental results show that the watermarked audio signals maintained high fidelity of more than 20 dBs which meets the International Federation of Phonographic Industry requirements. The results also show that the proposed scheme is robust against signal processing attacks such as MP3, time scale modification, and resizing attacks.

GEOMETRIC ATTACK RESISTANT ROBUST IMAGE WATERMARKING SCHEME

A new watermarking approach based on affine Legendre moment invariants (ALMIs) and local characteristic regions (LCRs) which allows watermark detection and extraction under affine transformation attacks is presented in this paper. It is a non-blind watermarking scheme. Original image color image is converted into HSV color space and divided into four parts. LCR is constructed and a set of affine invariants are derived on LCRs based on Legendre moments for each part. These invariants can be used for estimating the affine transform coefficients on the LCRs. ALMIs are used for watermark embedding, detection and extraction as they provide synchronization and invariant feature which is necessary for a robust watermarking scheme. The proposed scheme shows resistance to geometric distortion, cropping, filtering, compression, and additive noise than the existing ALMI based scheme [Alghoniemy, M. and Tewfik, A. H. [2004] "Geometric invariance in image watermarking," IEEE Trans. Image Process13(2), 145–153] and affine geometric moment invariant (AGMI) based scheme [Seo, J. S. and Yoo, C. D. [2006] "Image watermarking based on invariant regions of scale-space representation," IEEE Trans. Signal Process. 54(4), 1537–1549].

A Hybrid Non-Blind Watermarking Scheme Based on DCT and SVD

A Hybrid Non-Blind Watermarking Scheme Based on DCT and SVD

ROBUST WATERMARKING SCHEMES USING SELECTIVE CURVELET COEFFICIENTS BASED ON A HVS MODEL

In this paper, six robust non-blind watermarking schemes based on curvelet transform are proposed. Single band watermarking method was proposed in Ref. 1. This paper develops the single band watermarking method and adds Human Vision System (HVS) to form six different multi-bands watermarking methods. With the increasing redundancy of watermark, the robustness of the algorithm will be investigated and comparative studies with the single band watermarking will be shown. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed algorithms have great robustness against various imaging attacks.

AN IMPROVED WAVELET DOMAIN DIGITAL WATERMARKING FOR IMAGE PROTECTION

Watermarking is a potential method for the protection of ownership rights on digital images. A robust, invisible, non-blind watermarking scheme in the wavelet domain is proposed in this paper. The watermark is embedded in the mid frequency band after performing a single level wavelet decomposition using Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT). The coefficients are grouped randomly prior to watermarking. The watermarked image is tested for various attacks including filtering and geometric attacks. The novelty of the proposed approach is that it provides better resistance to collusion attack also when compared with existing spatial domain approach. The appropriate mid frequency band for embedding the watermark is tested and the HL band proves to be the best.

Subdivision surface watermarking

This paper presents a robust non-blind watermarking scheme for subdivision surfaces. The algorithm works in the frequency domain, by modulating spectral coefficients of the subdivision control mesh. The compactness of the watermarking support (a coarse control mesh) has led us to optimize the trade-off between watermarking redundancy (which ensures robustness) and imperceptibility by introducing two contributions: (1) spectral coefficients are perturbed according to a new modulation scheme analysing the spectrum shape and (2) the redundancy is optimized by using error correcting codes coming from telecommunication theory. Since the watermarked surface can be attacked in a subdivided version, we have introduced an algorithm to retrieve the control polyhedron, starting from a subdivided, attacked version. Experiments have shown the high robustness of our scheme against geometry attacks such as noise addition, quantization or non-uniform scaling and also connectivity alterations such as remeshing or simplification.