A highly secure oblivious sparse coding-based watermarking system for ownership verification

An enhanced hybrid image watermarking scheme for security of medical and non-medical images based on DWT and 2-D SVD

A blind dual color images watermarking based on singular value decomposition

Optical color watermarking based on single-pixel imaging and singular value decomposition in invariant wavelet domain

ABC optimized secured image watermarking scheme to find out the rightful ownership

For image authentication, the competence of accurately locating tampering and ensuring security is desirable. In this paper, a novel reversible data embedding based on Integer Wavelet Transform for tamper-proof watermarks is proposed. A contentbased watermark generated from host image is embedded into the carrier. The embedded data can be retrieved and the original host image can be recovered without distortion. The difference between the extracted watermark and the watermark generated from specific coefficients representing local features is applied to localize tampers. Experimental results show that the host image can be recovered after extracting the watermark if there are no attacks. Otherwise, the tampered positions can be localized explicitly and directly in the reconstructed host image even if the watermarked image was attacked by an invisible tampering. The proposed algorithm can be used for image authentication and tampering localization without using original image and original watermark.

Watermarking has become a crucial technique for protecting copyright and verifying the authenticity of images due to the rapid distribution of digital images and the ease and reliability of image content modification. In this research, we introduce a hybrid digital picture watermarking method that is both secure and resilient. This would use the discrete wavelet transform (DWT), the discrete cosine transforms (DCT), singular value decomposition (SVD), and cryptographic systems such as RSA and chaotic maps. Hence, this method tries to balance the tradeoff of robustness, security, and imperceptibility. We first encrypt the watermark using RSA, and then a chaotic logistic map (CLM) scrambles the already designed encrypted watermark to further enhance its robustness. By putting the watermark in the host image's separately calculated DWT-DCT coefficients, the proposed method works well even when compression, noise addition filtering, and geometric attacks are used. The test results demonstrate that the suggested method does better than other methods in Structural Similarity Index (SSIM), Normalized Correlation (NC), and Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratio (PSNR). Regardless of the nature of the attack, our proposed method consistently generates PSNR values above 55 dB and NC values above to 0.90, indicating correct watermark extraction and excellent image perception. We use cryptographic methods to secure the watermark from retrieval and modification by unauthenticated users. In addition, our approach is superior to the current watermarking methods in robustness and unobtrusiveness. In further works, we plan to improve the robustness of the approach against more complex geometric attacks and apply it for watermarking video and 3D content.

A DWT-SVD based adaptive color multi-watermarking scheme for copyright protection using AMEF and PSO-GWO

In this paper, we proposed a novel watermarking scheme based on adaptive quantization index modulation and singular value decomposition in the hybrid discrete wavelet transform (DWT) and discrete cosine transform (DCT). The secret watermark bits are embedded on the singular values vector of blocks within low frequency subband in host image hybrid DWT-DCT domain. To embed watermark imperceptibly, robustly and securely, we model the adaptive quantization steps by utilizing human visual system (HVS) characteristics and particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed scheme is robust to variety of image processing attacks. In the proposed algorithm the quantized embedding strategy is adopted, so no host image is needed for blind extraction of watermarking image.

Reversible data hiding in encrypted images (RDHEI) has recently garnered attention for embedding secret data within anonymized images, overcoming the spatial-correlation dependency of traditional RDH methods. In particular, this paper introduces a new RDHEI scheme based on chaos theory and Chinese Remainder Theorem (CRT). Initially, the host image is encrypted using a chaos-based symmetric cipher that adheres to strong cryptographic principles and demonstrates robust security features. Next, bits from the secret image are XORed with a random bit sequence generated by a chaotic function, initiated by a data-hiding key. Subsequently, a new data embedding method, based on pixel fusion and the CRT, is introduced. This data-hiding and encoding process, which incorporates two encrypted image bytes and one secret image bit, maintains a consistent embedding capacity of 0.5 bits per pixel (BPP), independent of the host image's complexity, while ensuring reversibility. At the receiving end, both the original host image and the embedded secret data can be flawlessly recovered. Furthermore, the proposed scheme enables extraction of the secret image based solely on the data-hiding key, without necessitating the decryption key, thereby achieving the method's semi-separability property. Experimental results indicate that the proposed scheme, which offers a fixed embedding capacity and induces only a minimal increase in the watermarked-to-original image size ratio (WOSR), upholds essential theoretical values necessary for encryption and withstands common cryptographic attacks. Moreover, as a fully reversible and semi-separable technique, the proposed scheme demonstrates both feasibility and efficiency in data hiding, surpassing several state-of-the-art methods in certain performance metrics.

Image watermarking plays a vital role in providing protection from copyright violation. However, conventional watermarking techniques typically exhibit trade-offs in terms of image quality, robustness and capacity constrains. More often than not, these techniques optimize on one constrain while settling with the two other constraints. Therefore, in this paper, an enhanced saliency detection based watermarking method is proposed to simultaneously improve quality, capacity, and robustness. First, the enhanced structured matrix decomposition (E-SMD) is proposed to extract salient regions in the host image for producing a saliency mask. This mask is then applied to partition the foreground and background of the host and watermark images. Subsequently, the watermark (with the same dimension of host image) is shuffled using multiple Arnold and Logistic chaotic maps, and the resulting shuffled-watermark is embedded into the wavelet domain of the host image. Furthermore, a filtering operation is put forward to estimate the original host image so that the proposed watermarking method can also operate in blind mode. In the best case scenario, we could embed a 24-bit image as the watermark into another 24-bit image while maintaining an average SSIM of 0.9999 and achieving high robustness against commonly applied watermark attacks. Furthermore, as per our best knowledge, with high payload embedding, the significant improvement in these features (in terms of saliency, PSNR, SSIM, and NC) has not been achieved by the state-of-the-art methods. Thus, the outcomes of this research realizes a trade-off independent image watermarking method, which is a first of its kind in this domain.

Digital image watermarking is one of the largest research fields, and it plays a vital role in digital information authentication and security. Based on the study of watermarking systems, the whole process may be segregated into the processes of watermark embedding and extraction. In this paper, a review of the theoretical and experimental analysis and performance measurement of representative digital image watermarking systems in spatial and transform domains is presented. The significant characteristics of the digital image watermarking scheme are robustness, capacity, imperceptibility, the security of the hiding place, and false-positive of the watermarking algorithm. Comparison of the different watermarking techniques such as the least significant bit (LSB), singular value decomposition (SVD), the discrete wavelet transform (DWT), and the discrete cosine transform (DCT) is presented in a tabular form. A detailed discussion along with an algorithm for digital image encryption/decryption through embedding and extraction is given. A brief comparison of their relative advantages and disadvantages is also noted in this paper.KeywordsInformation hidingWatermarkingSecurityAttacksRobust

In this paper, a novel image watermarking method is proposed which is based on discrete wave transformation (DWT), Hessenberg decomposition (HD), and singular value decomposition (SVD). First, in the embedding process, the host image is decomposed into a number of sub-bands through multi-level DWT, and the resulting coefficients of which are then used as the input for HD. The watermark is operated on the SVD at the same time. The watermark is finally embedded into the host image by the scaling factor. Fruit fly optimization algorithm, one of the natural-inspired optimization algorithms is devoted to find the scaling factor through the proposed objective evaluation function. The proposed method is compared to other research works under various spoof attacks, such as the filter, noise, JPEG compression, JPEG2000 compression, and sharpening attacks. The experimental results show that the proposed image watermarking method has a good trade-off between robustness and invisibility even for the watermarks with multiple sizes.

Several fragile watermarking techniques cannot detect vector quantization (VQ) attacks; the block-based approach, for example. Celik et al. (IEEE Trans. Image Processing, vol. 11, no. 6, pp. 585-595, 2002) proposed a hierarchical watermarking approach to reveal the VQ attacks. In order to improve the hierarchical watermarking approach, we present a new fragile watermarking technique based on genetic algorithms (GAs) to embed watermarks into the frequency domain of a host image. Different from existing schemes, the adjustment in the host image by GAs will achieve the embedding of fragile watermarks. The technique can provide a fundamental platform for other fragile watermarking techniques. Furthermore, the embedding of watermarks into frequency domain enhances the security in fragile watermarking

In this paper, an improved digital watermarking scheme combined with multi-level discrete cosine transform (DCT), discrete wavelet transform (DWT), and singular value decomposition (SVD) is proposed. To improve the security of the watermark, the encrypted watermark is acquired by Arnold transform before watermark embedding. The proposed scheme is proved to be robust, and its performance is evaluated with respect to the normalized correlation (NC) and peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR). The robustness of the proposed scheme is also evaluated under different attacks which include salt and pepper noise, Gaussian noise, and other attacks. The experimental results are also conducted to verify the effect of false positive problem which exists in most watermarking schemes based on SVD.

Security and authentication of the people information is effectively provided through various watermarking algorithms. Most of the conventional watermarking algorithms have their own drawbacks in maintaining the quality and security of the image against various attacks. In order to overcome the above stated issues, a watermarking technique based on optimization is required for preserving image quality. In this paper, singular value decomposition (SVD) based digital image watermarking (DIW) scheme is proposed in hybrid discrete cosine transform (DCT) and discrete wavelet transform (DWT) using optimization algorithms like particle swarm optimization (PSO) and Jaya algorithm. The watermark image (WI) is embedded into low frequency DWT sub-band of DCT of cover image. PSO and Jaya algorithms are applied to improve the security threats and quality by assessing the fitness function. The work involves in utilizing the feature points in embedding of watermarks and analyzing the impact of various types of attacks with respect to image quality. The performance parameters like peak signal to noise ratio (PSNR), Structural Similarity Index (SSIM) and correlation coefficient of fitness function given by PSO and Jaya algorithm.