Robust Watermarking Research Articles

Robust Watermarking Techniques for the Authentication and Copyright Protection of Digital Images: A Survey

Digital image authentication and security are crucial concerns for the digital revolution since any image may be readily tampered with. Digital watermarking schemes were since been utilized to tackle a range of problems over time and involving the verification of digital images and copyright protection. In a real-world setting, watermarked contents are frequently subject to a succession of assaults which makes it necessary to strike a balance between resilience and imperceptibility in the face of attacks. There are numerous hazards to this, and numerous watermarking techniques have been created to counter them. Data with less perceptual distortion should be able to be included in a real watermarking technique in addition to restoring the original cover content. As a result, robustness, imperceptibility, and security are three crucial criteria for digital content'sauthentication and copyrightpreservation. This study therefore presents a careful review of some cutting-edge watermarking technologies used for copyright protection and authentication so as to identify their strengths and limitations. For clarity, this study shall explain some basic concepts of digital watermarking as well as the various forms of attacks on watermarks. The contributions from this work will be useful to researchers aim at developing efficient watermarking techniques

Machine learning based multipurpose medical image watermarking.

Digital data security has become an exigent area of research due to a huge amount of data availability at present time. Some of the fields like medical imaging and medical data sharing over communication platforms require high security against counterfeit access, manipulation and other processing operations. It is essential because the changed/manipulated data may lead to erroneous judgment by medical experts and can negatively influence the human's heath. This work offers a blind and robust medical image watermarking framework using deep neural network to provide effective security solutions for medical images. During watermarking, the region of interest (ROI) data of the original image is preserved by employing the LZW (Lampel-Ziv-Welch) compression algorithm. Subsequently the robust watermark is inserted into the original image using IWT (integer wavelet transform) based embedding approach. Next, the SHA-256 algorithm-based hash keys are generated for ROI and RONI (region of non-interest) regions. The fragile watermark is then prepared by ROI recovery data and the hash keys. Further, the LSB replacement-based insertion mechanism is utilized to embed the fragile watermark into RONI embedding region of robust watermarked image. A deep neural network-based framework is used to perform robust watermark extraction for efficient results with less computational time. Simulation results verify that the scheme has significant imperceptibility, efficient robust watermark extraction, correct authentication and completely reversible nature for ROI recovery. The relative investigation with existing schemes confirms the dominance of the proposed work over already existing work.

Limit Bipolar Sequences for Patchwork-Based Robust Digital Audio Watermarking

Ensuring the robustness of digital audio watermarking under the influence of interference, various transformations and possible attacks is an urgent problem. One of the most used and fairly stable marking methods is the patchwork method. Its robustness is ensured by the use of expanding bipolar numerical sequences in the formation and embedding of a watermark in a digital audio and correlation detection in the detection and extraction of a watermark. An analysis of the patchwork method showed that the absolute values of the ratio of the maximum of the autocorrelation function (ACF) to its minimum for expanding bipolar sequences and extended marker sequences used in traditional digital watermarking approach 2 with high accuracy. This made it possible to formulate criteria for searching for special expanding bipolar sequences, which have improved correlation properties and greater robustness. The article developed a mathematical apparatus for searching and constructing limit-expanding bipolar sequences used in solving the problem of robust digital audio watermarking using the patchwork method. Limit bipolar sequences are defined as sequences whose autocorrelation functions have the maximum possible ratios of maximum to minimum in absolute value. Theorems and corollaries from them are formulated and proved: on the existence of an upper bound on the minimum values of autocorrelation functions of limit bipolar sequences and on the values of the first and second petals of the ACF. On this basis, a rigorous mathematical definition of limit bipolar sequences is given. A method for searching for the complete set of limit bipolar sequences based on rational search and a method for constructing limit bipolar sequences of arbitrary length using generating functions are developed. The results of the computer simulation of the assessment of the values of the absolute value of the ratio of the maximum to the minimum of the autocorrelation and cross-correlation functions of the studied bipolar sequences for blind reception are presented. It is shown that the proposed limit bipolar sequences are characterized by better correlation properties in comparison with the traditionally used bipolar sequences and are more robust.

Robust Dual Digital Watermark Applied to Antique Digitized Cinema Images: Resistant to Print-Scan Attack

Nowadays, advances in information and communication technologies along with easy access to electronic devices such as smartphones have achieved an agile and efficient storing, edition, and distribution of digital multimedia files. However, lack of regulation has led to several problems associated with intellectual property authentication and copyright protection. Furthermore, the problem becomes complex in a scenario of illegal printed exploitation, which involves printing and scanning processes. To solve these problems, several digital watermarking in combination with cryptographic algorithms has been proposed. In this paper, a strategy of robust watermarking is defined consisting of the administration and detection of unauthorized use of digitized cinematographic images from Mexican cultural heritage. The proposed strategy is based on the combination of two types of digital watermarking, one of visible-camouflaged type based on spatial domain and another of invisible type based on frequency domain, together with a particle swarm optimization. The experimental results show the high performance of the proposed algorithm faced to printing-scanning processes or digital-analogue attack, and common image geometric and image processing attacks such as JPEG compression. Additionally, the imperceptibility of the watermark is evaluated by PSNR and compared with other previously proposed algorithms.

Development of a cropping resilient watermarking scheme based on contourlet transform for secure IoT communication

The objective of this work is to propose a robust watermarking method as watermarking techniques are widely used today for preventing image altering and duplication. With the growth of image-based IoT applications nowadays, the need for developing robust digital watermarking techniques is of high demand. In this work, a robust yet highly perceptible watermarking scheme is proposed. The proposed scheme is based on the Contourlet Transform (CT) and Singular Value Decomposition (SVD) as the embedding domain in which the high-frequency components are chosen for embedding. The frequency domain is selected in order to make the watermarking scheme resists image attacks as the watermark is spreaded across different frequency bands in the cover image and hence the possibility of altering all the embedded bands is not possible as it will results in destroying the cover image. On the other hand, the Arnold transformation was used to insure secure IOT communication where the Arnold transform is applied to the binary logo watermark before embedding for a more secure design. In this context, the host image has been decomposed into the first level of contourlet transform and the highest frequency sub-bands are selected for embedding after performing the SVD on those bands where the SVD matrix is chosen to be the embedding domain. Moreover, This work aims to resist the cropping attack on images where PSNR values were above 52 dB and NC values ranged from 0.8 to 0.9 under various types of cropping attacks. In addition, the proposed method demonstrates its ability to resist various geometric and noise attacks such as JPEG compression, histogram equalization, gaussian noising and image brightening. Comparisons with state-of-the-art work demonstrate the proposed scheme's efficienc

AutoCRW: Learning based robust watermarking for smart city applications

AbstractDeep learning has become a promising model in the industry due to its superior learning accuracy and efficiency. In addition to conventional applications, such as fraud detection, natural language processing, image classification and reconstruction, object detection and segmentation this model can be widely used for data hiding, that is, watermarking. Existing transformed‐domain‐based watermarking provided better robustness toward attacks. In this article, an interesting autoencoder convolutional neural network (CNN)‐based watermarking technique, AutoCRW, is proposed, which can prevent intellectual property theft of digital images. First, the autoencoder functionality of CNN generates two versions of the same image, namely positive and negative version of the images, which decompose by a transformed domain scheme. Then, watermark information is embedded into the output images, which can be extracted to realize copyright protection and ownership verification. Finally, a denoising convolutional neural network (DnCNN) is employed over the extracted mark to ensure the robustness of the watermarking system. Extensive experiments demonstrate that the proposed algorithm has high invisibility and good robustness against several attacks.

A bilateral attention based generative adversarial network for DIBR 3D image watermarking

This paper presents a bilateral attention based generative adversarial network (BAGAN) for depth-image-based rendering (DIBR) 3D image watermarking to protect the image copyright. Convolutional block operations are employed to extract main image features for robust watermarking, but embedding watermark into some features will degrade image quality much. To relieve this kind of image distortion, the bilateral attention module (BAM) is utilized by mining correlations of the center view and the depth map to compute attention of the 3D image for guiding watermark to distribute over different image regions. Since a modality gap exists between the center view and the depth map, a cross-modal feature fusion module (CMFFM) is designed for BAM to bridge the cross-view gap. Because the depth map has lots of flat background information including many redundant features, to prune them, the depth redundancy elimination module (DREM) is used for cross-view feature fusion. In the decoder, two extractors with the same structure are built to recover watermark from the center view and the synthesized view, respectively. In addition, the discriminator is supposed to build a competitive relationship with the encoder to increase the image quality. The noise sub-network is used to train different image attacks for robustness. Extensive experimental results have demonstrated that the proposed BAGAN can obtain higher watermarking invisibility and robustness compared with existing DIBR 3D watermarking methods. Ablation experiments have also proven the effectiveness of DREM, CMFFM and BAM on BAGAN.

Towards perceptual image watermarking with robust texture measurement

Improving the perceptual quality of images is challenging for the robust watermarking method. To address this problem, most existing algorithms proposed to guide the watermark embedding based on just noticeable difference (JND) model, which mainly consists of corresponding contrast masking factor. However, existing metrics are mostly based on the intra-block texture energy, which cannot exactly describe the texture information and meet the needs of watermarking robustness. In this paper, we present a new texture metric, which incorporates the visual saliency based inter-block texture regularity with the robust discrete cosine transform (DCT) coefficients. The JND model is constructed as a modulation factor by using the proposed robust texture metric, which embeds the intra-block energy and inter-block regularity measurement to capture local and global features. Based on the proposed model, we introduce an adaptive quantization step for the watermarking framework. Both quantitative and qualitative results show that our scheme achieves better performance in comparison with several state-of-the-art schemes.

Underwater image copyright protection using robust watermarking technique

<span lang="EN-US">It became possible to send and reformat underwater images for copyright theft due to the rapid advancement of computer networks and image forgery tools. Acquiring underwater images is dangerous and requires much efforts, expensive imaging equipment, and professional photographers. Therefore, there is an urgent need to develop copyright protection methods to ensure that property rights are not lost. This paper presents a robust watermarking technique that ensures proof of ownership for underwater images, preventing unauthorized individuals from claiming ownership. The suggested watermarking technique's main contribution depends on using the Hough transform in order to find appropriate regions to hide the watermark information within the underwater images. The Hough transform is useful for identifying areas of difficult texture that can be used as a host for watermark information with minimal distortion. Also, the Twofish algorithm has been used to encrypt the watermark information before being hidden in the underwater image. The performance of the suggested watermarking technique is tested by two metrics: quality and robustness. The results show that the suggested method works because of the quality of the images that were made <span>after the watermark was added and because it could withstand the attacks on it.</span></span>

Analysis of Embedding Locations in the Subband Frequency DCT on Scanned Images

Uploading an identity card as an image for the account verification process or transactions online can be a threat to application users. Identity card theft can be carried out by irresponsible persons if the application can be hacked. Therefore, protection of the image is required for authentication. In this study, the proposed technique is watermarking. A watermark in the form of a binary image will be embedded into the image as ownership using a Discrete Cosine Transform. The Discrete Cosine Transform works in the frequency domain. The location of the embedding of different watermarks was analysed in each 8×8 DCT block. The results of the analysis to assess the imperceptibility of original images and watermarked images using PSNR (Peak Signal to Noise Ratio) and SSIM (Structural Similarity Index Measure), while assessing the watermark robustness embedded using NCC (Normalized Cross Correlation). The results show PSNR (Peak Signal to Noise Ratio) ≥ 54 dB with a watermark strength of 0,1 and an average SSIM (Structural Similarity Index Measure) ≥ 0,9 on 4 scanned images in BMP format with a resolution of 100 DPI. A good watermark embedding is done on the green component at middle frequencies to maintain a balance between imperceptibility and robustness. In contrast, the red component at low frequency is vulnerable to attacks in the form of brightness +20 and contrast +50 with an average NCC (Normalized Cross Correlation) ≤ 0,85.

A robust watermarking scheme via optimization-based image reconstruction technique

A robust watermarking scheme via optimization-based image reconstruction technique

Embedding color watermark image to color host image based on 2D-DCT

For protecting the copyright of color image, a blind watermarking algorithm for color digital images is proposed in this paper. First, affine transform and Arnold transform are successively used in the pre-processing stage to encrypt watermark information twice, which greatly improves security of watermarking algorithm. Then, the different embedding coefficients in the different image blocks and the different quantization steps in the different image layers are selected to modify part of the middle-frequency coefficients after two-dimensional discrete cosine transform (2D-DCT) for embedding the color digital watermark, which helps to improve the invisibility and robustness of watermark. Finally, the relationship between coefficient pairs of 2D-DCT is used to realize the blind extraction of the watermark information. By comparing the proposed algorithm to other relevant watermarking algorithms after many experiments, we can see that the proposed watermarking algorithm has better invisibility, stronger robustness, larger capacity and higher security.

Constructing gene features for robust 3D mesh zero-watermarking

The rapid developments of information technology and network communication have made mesh models convenient for copying and sharing through the Internet. Accordingly, the protection of the intellectual property has become an urgent and crucial task. No doubt that the robust watermarking technology is a clever way to solve this issue. The fault tolerance, however, is proportional to the amount of data. Hence, it is difficult to counteract attacks which deleting or altering a large amount of vertex information. In this article, we aim to propose a robust zero-watermarking technique based on 3D mesh gene features. The model is divided into multiple gene groups. Recessive and dominant features can be extracted from these gene groups to resist the distortion and distortionless attacks, respectively. Simulations have proved that the gene features can be used to effectively resist attacks of noise addition, cropping, smoothing, simplification, and common lossless operations. Thus, the proposed method can firmly protect the intellectual property rights of the mesh model.

LKAW: A Robust Watermarking Method Based on Large Kernel Convolution and Adaptive Weight Assignment

Robust watermarking requires finding invariant features under multiple attacks to ensure correct extraction. Deep learning has extremely powerful in extracting features, and watermarking algorithms based on deep learning have attracted widespread attention. Most existing methods use small kernel convolution to extract image features and embed the watermarking. However, the effective perception fields for small kernel convolution are extremely confined, so the pixels that each watermarking can affect are restricted, thus limiting the performance of the watermarking. To address these problems, we propose a watermarking network based on large kernel convolution and adaptive weight assignment for loss functions. It uses large-kernel depth-wise convolution to extract features for learning large-scale image information and subsequently projects the watermarking into a high-dimensional space by convolution to achieve adaptability in the channel dimension. Subsequently, the modification of the embedded watermarking on the cover image is extended to more pixels. Because the magnitude and convergence rates of each loss function are different, an adaptive loss weight assignment strategy is proposed to make the weights participate in the network training together and adjust the weight dynamically. Further, a high-frequency wavelet loss is proposed, by which the watermarking is restricted to only the low-frequency wavelet sub-bands, thereby enhancing the robustness of watermarking against image compression. The experimental results show that the peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) of the encoded image reaches 40.12, the structural similarity (SSIM) reaches 0.9721, and the watermarking has good robustness against various types of noise.

Digital watermarking scheme based on curvelet transform and multiple chaotic maps

The rapid development of digital products brings security issues. Digital watermarking technology is an important means to handle these problems. To enhance the imperceptibility of watermark and locate the possible tampering as well, a digital watermarking scheme based on curvelet transform is presented by combining with multiple chaotic maps. The host image is decomposed into three parts, i.e., coarse layer, detail layer and fine layer, with curvelet transform, and a robust watermark is embedded into the coarse layer for copyright protection of digital products. In addition, an authentication watermark is embedded into the fine layer to detect and locate the illegal changes. Simulation results show that the proposed digital watermarking scheme possesses acceptable robustness and security.

CADW: CGAN-Based Attack on Deep Robust Image Watermarking

Robust watermarking plays an essential role in copyright protection for digital images. Meanwhile, the studies of robust image watermarking and corresponding attack methods promote and complement each other. Because the traditional attack methods are weak to attack the deep watermarking, in this work, we thus design an effective watermarking attack method based on the conditional generative adversarial nets (CGAN). Also, according to the network structure of CGAN, a targeted and combined loss function is constructed, which can guarantee acceptable visual quality of attacked image and make the watermark extraction fail simultaneously. Experimental results demonstrate that our method is effective for some state-of-the-art deep robust image watermarking methods with the transferability. In addition, as an attack method, it can be regarded as an evaluation standard to measure the robustness of watermarking.

Screen-shooting robust watermarking with end-to-end neural network

Screen-shooting robust watermarking with end-to-end neural network

Robust Watermarking Algorithm for Medical Images Based on Non-Subsampled Shearlet Transform and Schur Decomposition

Robust Watermarking Algorithm for Medical Images Based on Non-Subsampled Shearlet Transform and Schur Decomposition

Robust Watermarking Algorithm for Medical Volume Data Based on Polar Cosine Transform and 3D-DCT

Robust Watermarking Algorithm for Medical Volume Data Based on Polar Cosine Transform and 3D-DCT

SSVS-SSVD Based Desynchronization Attacks Resilient Watermarking Method for Stereo Signals

Most of the audio signals in real-world applications are stereo signals. However, the previous desynchronization attacks resilient watermarking methods cannot preserve perceptual quality or achieve robustness when constrained by high embedding rates and stereo host. In this paper, based on two novel features segmental singular values summation (SSVS) and segmental singular values difference (SSVD) that are generated using discrete cosine transform (DCT) and singular value decomposition (SVD), we present a robust watermarking method for stereo signals that not only is robust to desynchronization attacks and common signal processing attacks but also has a larger embedding rate compared with the previous methods. In the proposed method, we first apply DCT and SVD on each segment of the host signal to extract the SSVS feature and the SSVD feature. Then we generate the adaptive embedding parameters and embed watermark bits via optimized embedding strategies based on these features. Due to the use of the adaptive embedding parameters and the optimized embedding strategies, the proposed method significantly increases the embedding rate without compromising the robustness and perceptual quality. Analysis results show our proposed method outperforms the state-of-the-art methods by a large margin, where the perceptual quality improvement is over 14%, and the robustness against desynchronization attacks is improved by more than 49% when the embedding rate is 70 bps.