A Novel Improved Reversible Visible Image Watermarking Algorithm Based on Grad-CAM and JND

Watermarking is an effective solution for copyright protection and forensics tracking via hiding information into the image signal. Recently, spatial-embedding watermarking methods from different transform domain have been proposed rapidly and effectively protect the copyright of the color image. Compared to the individual frequency domain method, it has both advantages of spatial domain and frequency domain. Here, we proposed a novel spatial-embedding watermarking method based on an attended just noticeable difference (JND) model with color complexity, to achieve a good tradeoff between robustness and perceptual quality. In particular, at the spatial embedding level, the direct current (DC) coefficients are selected for embedding and the perceptual JND model is used to guide the amount of pixel modification to improve visual quality. Different from the previous JND model, we proposed an attended JND model that considers color complexity, which is more consistent of the human visual perception model. Compared with the other JND models, the proposed JND model is more suitable for the watermarking framework. Experimental results show that the proposed watermarking scheme has better performance than other existing watermarking schemes. This greatly benefits the practical implementations of the spatial-embedding watermarking methods.

Reversible visible watermarking is used to combat the copyright infringement which can perfectly restore the original cover image by removing the embedded visible watermark. This paper proposes an improved reversible visible image watermarking scheme based on human visual system (HVS) and a region of interest selection (ROI-selection) strategy. Firstly, the cover image is partitioned into non-overlapped blocks. Then, a visual effect factor (VEF) based on HVS is adopted to adaptively modify the pixel values, which can provide a better fusion effect for the visible watermark and the cover image. The VEF value is determined by using the estimated watermarked and non-watermarked blocks within the neighborhood of each block. Finally, the visible watermark is embedded into the divided blocks using the traditional difference-expansion method, and a ROI-selection strategy is designed to find the most suitable regions for watermark embedding. Experimental results show the effectiveness and superiority of the proposed scheme compared to some existing works.

Presented is an efficient watermarking scheme using Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) to watermark host fingerprint images with their corresponding facial images in the Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) domain. PSO is used to find the best DCT coefficients’ locations in the host image where the facial image data can be embedded, so that the distortion produced in the host image is minimum. The objective function for PSO is formulated in terms of the Structural Similarity Index (SSIM) and the Orientation Certainty Level Index (OCL) so as to base it on the simple visual effect of the human visual perception capability and correct minutia prediction ability. The results exhibit better watermarked image quality while retaining the feature set of the original fingerprint. Moreover, the proposed technique is robust so that the extraction of watermark is possible even after the watermarked image is exposed to attacks. As a result, at the receiver’s end, the watermarked fingerprint image and the extracted facial image can be verified for a secure and accurate biometric based personal authentication.

Today, the Internet is a worldwide broadcasting capability, a mechanism for information dissemination and a medium for collaboration and interaction between individuals and their computers without regard for geographic location. With the rapid evolution of digital networks, digital libraries and World Wide Web (WWW) services, the convenient broadcasting or exposition of digital products on the global network leads easily to illegal copying, modifying and retransmission. The Internet has spawned many copyright issues involving multimedia content distribution. Let’s say an owner would like to sell or distribute a work to legal/registered users only. If the work were subsequently copied/redistributed illegally, how could the owner find who was responsible? Cryptographic techniques provide an effective solution for securing the delivery process and controlling the use of the contents that an user has obtained. However, with flawless transmission through the network, the contents after decryption are exactly the same as the original data. The contents can be copied perfectly infinite times. A user can also manipulate the contents. Digital watermarking (Arnold, Schmucker, & Wolthusen, 2003; Katzenbeisser & Petitcolas, 2000) offers a way to counter copyright piracy on global networks that are not solvable by cryptography. It provides proof and tracking capabilities to illegal copying and distribution of multimedia information. Most existing digital watermarking schemes are based on some assumptions for watermark detection and extraction. Some schemes require the previous knowledge of watermark locations, strengths or some thresholds. In some algorithms, the watermark is estimated with the help of the original watermark information. To ensure the robustness and invisibility of the watermark, the optimum embedding locations are usually different for different images. For a large image database, it could be a disadvantage to require watermark location and strength information for watermark detection and extraction. A large amount of information then needs to be stored. On the Internet, an owner would like to distribute multimedia data by signing different watermarks to different users in order to prevent illegal redistribution of the data by a legal user. In this scenario, watermark detection and extraction algorithms requiring information of either watermark embedding locations and strengths or the original watermark should fail, since one does not know exactly which watermark is embedded in a particular copy of the watermarked image. To this end, we present a new blind watermarking scheme (Yu, Sattar, & Ma, 2002; Yu & Sattar, 2003, 2005) based on Independent Component Analysis (ICA) (Hyvarinen, 1999; Hyvärinen & Oja, 1999; Lee, 1998) for color images, which can overcome existing problems of watermark detection and extraction as described above. The new ICA-based scheme is found to be efficient in the application of data tracking/tracing for multimedia distribution through the Internet against other digital watermarking schemes. By adopting this ICA-based watermarking scheme, an efficient multimedia distribution framework/protocol for copyright protection can be accomplished. This article is organized as follows: The watermark embedding and extraction algorithms for color image watermarking using the new ICA-based scheme are presented next, followed by a discussion and comments on the results, security issues, summary and future works.

Just noticeable difference (JND), which reveals the visibility of our human visual system (HVS), is useful for image/video coding. Due to the content complexity, it is hard to accurately estimate the JND thresholds for different image blocks (e.g., edge and texture). Research on cognitive science indicates that the HVS is adaptive to extract the visual regularities for scene perception and understanding. Inspired by this, we analyze the effect of content complexity on visual masking, and calculate the content complexity with the distribution of orientation. Then, by considering the effect from content complexity, contrast sensitivity function, and luminance adaption, a novel JND model in Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) domain is proposed. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed model for JND estimation.

Just noticeable difference (JND) reflecting visual redundancy of human visual system (HVS) has been widely adopted in image/video processing. In this work, we introduce a novel JND model in pixel domain for screen content (SC) images. Due to the obvious different impacts on HVS between pictorial region and computer-generated texture, we decompose a SC image into screen content set (SCS) and non-screen content set (non-SCS) for JND modeling. For SCS, edge masking effect is mainly considered by using a parametric model with an adaptive edge representation. For non-SCS, both the edge masking effect and pattern masking effect are taken into account to improve distortion tolerance by injecting more noise to pattern complexity region without perceptual quality degradation. Furthermore, visual saliency is employed to adjust pattern masking effect in the view of HVS. Experimental results show that compared with state-of-the-arts, the proposed JND model can tolerate more distortion, and provide better perceptual quality at the same noise level.

A novel image steganography algorithm in wavelet domain is presented using the iterative blending method. Using this algorithm, we can hide a secret image with 256 gray levels into another carrier image. By taking full advantage of the masking characteristics of the human visual system, a JND (just noticeable difference) threshold matrix is given pixel by pixel in the image subbands taking into account the texture and the luminance content of carrier image. The secret image is divided into two matrices to make the gray level no more than 16. Then the matrices are adaptively embedded into the wavelet coefficients of the carrier image by iterative blending. The carrier image and the blending parameter can act as the private keys. The experimental results show that the proposed algorithm provides good transparency and is robust to some extent. The technique also can be used in digital watermarking and other digital application areas.

Macrophotography Images (MPIs) have recently emerged as an active topic due to the development of mobile phone camera technology. A large number of MPIs have been rapidly increasing in many rich visual services, such as smartphones or high-definition monitors. MPIs are often composed of sharp macroimage and blur background, which exhibit different perceptual properties that often lead to different just noticeable difference (JND) estimation. Inspired by this, we formulate the blur concealment (BC) as another factor to determine the total masking effect: the interaction is relatively straightforward with a limited masking effect in the sharp regions, and is complicated with a strong masking effect in the blur parts. Furthermore, texture and orientation adaption and color information weighting are separately incorporated into the contrast masking and color masking. Finally, considering both BC and masking effects, a novel robust watermarking framework based on the proposed blur-guided JND model for MPIs, targeting at further improving the MPIs copyright protection performance. Extensive experiments on MP2020 and Blur Detection data sets show that the applicability of the proposed JND model in the scenario of perceptually MPIs watermarking, and our proposed scheme can outperform the state-of-the-art watermarking schemes by providing better robustness performance at the uniform visual quality.

Digital CT Scan images are exchanged among the medical practitioners for consultative purposes or discussing diagnostic and therapeutic measures. This exchange of medical images imposes two main constraints for medical information: (i) the Content Authentication and (ii) Copyright protection. To address these two issues, we have proposed a technique of watermarking for medical images which embeds two watermarks in the CT scan image. The binary pattern is embedded in region of interest (ROI) for content authentication and the composite watermark is embedded in the region of non interest (RONI) for copyright protection. Initially CT Scan image is divided in ROI and RONI by segmentation process. The segmented ROI contains some holes which are first filled. The image morphology is then used and closing operation is applied on the resultant image which eliminates small holes and fills gaps in the contour. Thus binary mask is obtained which is used to separate ROI from RONI. Before embedding the binary pattern in ROI for data authentication purpose, the Least Significant Bit (LSB) information of ROI is extracted first and is saved in separate store. Also, before embedding the composite watermark, pixels in RONI are scrambled for providing the further security. The payload in both ROI and RONI is embedded with simple LSB substitution technique. The extraction procedure is the reverse of embedding process. However few steps of extraction procedure are same as embedding procedure. We have used CT scan image database obtained from Radiology Department, Ackron University Ohio USA. The experimental results show that the proposed algorithm provides better security of medical information during transmission by addressing both issues of data authentication and copyright protection.KeywordsMedical image watermarkingLeast significant bit techniqueImage morphologyImage segmentationData authenticationCopyright protectionRegion of interest (ROI)Region of non interest (RONI)

A new pyramidal JND (just noticeable difference) model is presented. The idea is to use this JND to determine the optimum strength for embedding the watermark providing an invisible and robust watermarking scheme. The image is first decomposed into a multiresolution representation using the pyramidal decomposition. Then, a perceptual model is proposed to compute the JND value for each pixel at each Laplacian level. This model takes into account three main characteristics of the human visual system (HVS), namely: contrast sensitivity, luminance adaptation and contrast masking. The performance of the proposed technique is evaluated in terms of transparency, using subjective and objective tests, and robustness to different common attacks.

The enhanced data processing technologies have made the manipulation and computation of digital data & images easier. This has created a need for the copyright protection of digital content. In this paper a novel reversible visible watermarking algorithm is proposed to cater the needs of copyright protection and to resume the original image data processing at the receiver's end. This proposed algorithm uses a noise sensitive region based watermarking embedding (NSRBWE) technique to embed the watermark W in the given region R of Image I. To extract the original image from the visible watermarked image it is necessary to remove the full watermark. We preserve the information of altered pixels of the region R in the rest of image I - R. Our algorithm can fully remove the watermark from the visible watermarked image. It uses a Secret Key K to reconstruct the altered pixels value. In addition, only users with correct secret key K can restore the original image.

This paper presents an objective MPEG-2 video quality measurement method based on fragile digital image watermarking. Based on the DWT-based watermarking scheme, this paper presents a fragile digital video watermarking scheme that can work as an automatic quality monitoring system. We embed watermark in the DWT domain of the I-frames of an original video, and the DWT coefficients for embedding are carefully selected so that the degradation of the watermark can reflect the degradation of the video quality. This scheme can track the change of the PSNR value and the Watson JND value. The Watson perceptual model is taken into account to weight the quality measurement according to the human visual system. The evaluations demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed scheme against MPEG-2 compression and noise pollution

In recent years, with the rapid development of internet, digital data has been widely used in various science and engineering applications. But, this development has also led to several threats and attacks from the intruders. Most of the organizations are very much concerned about the Illegal copyright activities which have become a series issue. A number of copyright protection schemes have been developed in the literature. Watermarking is one of the best known methods for copyright protection. Earlier Bit Error Rate (BER) is been observed to provide good results for choosing the optimal feature region from the watermarked image. However it fails to produce more accurate image quality measures. This research work mainly focuses on a novel technique implemented based on the simulated attacking approach and the GA-based Multi Dimensional Knapsack Problem (MDKP) solving technique to select the most sufficient feature regions for robust digital image watermarking without affecting the image quality. A major limitation in existing methods is the security problems which lead to decrease in the integrity of digital watermarking scheme. With that problem, the definite optimization problems (variant problems) cannot be resolved using genetic algorithms. To focus on the above mentioned problems, the proposed work uses two approaches. Chaotic Iterative Process encryption scheme is used to solve the security problems for watermarking image. Next, the optimal feature points can be chosen from the watermarked image by Modified version of Peak Signal Noise Ratio (MPSNR). MPSNR is based on the enhanced quality measurement of which point opposes the predefined and undefined attacks. With those two approaches the PSO algorithm is employed as a search strategy for identifying an optimal feature subset. The experimental results illustrates that comparing with various well-known feature-based techniques, the proposed method shows better performance in robust and more secure digital watermarking.

Today, the Internet is a worldwide broadcasting capability, a mechanism for information dissemination and a medium for collaboration and interaction between individuals and their computers without regard for geographic location. With the rapid evolution of digital networks, digital libraries and World Wide Web (WWW) services, the convenient broadcasting or exposition of digital products on the global network leads easily to illegal copying, modifying and retransmission. The Internet has spawned many copyright issues involving multimedia content distribution. Let’s say an owner would like to sell or distribute a work to legal/registered users only. If the work were subsequently copied/redistributed illegally, how could the owner find who was responsible? Cryptographic techniques provide an effective solution for securing the delivery process and controlling the use of the contents that an user has obtained. However, with flawless transmission through the network, the contents after decryption are exactly the same as the original data. The contents can be copied perfectly infinite times. A user can also manipulate the contents. Digital watermarking (Arnold, Schmucker, & Wolthusen, 2003; Katzenbeisser & Petitcolas, 2000) offers a way to counter copyright piracy on global networks that are not solvable by cryptography. It provides proof and tracking capabilities to illegal copying and distribution of multimedia information. Most existing digital watermarking schemes are based on some assumptions for watermark detection and extraction. Some schemes require the previous knowledge of watermark locations, strengths or some thresholds. In some algorithms, the watermark is estimated with the help of the original watermark information. To ensure the robustness and invisibility of the watermark, the optimum embedding locations are usually different for different images. For a large image database, it could be a disadvantage to require watermark location and strength information for watermark detection and extraction. A large amount of information then needs to be stored. On the Internet, an owner would like to distribute multimedia data by signing different watermarks to different users in order to prevent illegal redistribution of the data by a legal user. In this scenario, watermark detection and extraction algorithms requiring information of either watermark embedding locations and strengths or the original watermark should fail, since one does not know exactly which watermark is embedded in a particular copy of the watermarked image. To this end, we present a new blind watermarking scheme (Yu, Sattar, & Ma, 2002; Yu & Sattar, 2003, 2005) based on Independent Component Analysis (ICA) (Hyvarinen, 1999; Hyvärinen & Oja, 1999; Lee, 1998) for color images, which can overcome existing problems of watermark detection and extraction as described above. The new ICA-based scheme is found to be efficient in the application of data tracking/tracing for multimedia distribution through the Internet against other digital watermarking schemes. By adopting this ICA-based watermarking scheme, an efficient multimedia distribution framework/protocol for copyright protection can be accomplished. This article is organized as follows: The watermark embedding and extraction algorithms for color image watermarking using the new ICA-based scheme are presented next, followed by a discussion and comments on the results, security issues, summary and future works.

Scalable coding-based content adaptation poses serious challenges to traditional watermarking algorithms, which do not consider the scalable coding structure and hence cannot guarantee correct watermark extraction in media consumption chain. In this paper, we propose a novel concept of scalable blind watermarking that ensures more robust watermark extraction at various compression ratios while not effecting the visual quality of host media. The proposed algorithm generates scalable and robust watermarked image code-stream that allows the user to constrain embedding distortion for target content adaptations. The watermarked image code-stream consists of hierarchically nested joint distortion-robustness coding atoms. The code-stream is generated by proposing a new wavelet domain blind watermarking algorithm guided by a quantization based binary tree. The code-stream can be truncated at any distortion-robustness atom to generate the watermarked image with the desired distortion-robustness requirements. A blind extractor is capable of extracting watermark data from the watermarked images. The algorithm is further extended to incorporate a bit-plane discarding-based quantization model used in scalable coding-based content adaptation, e.g., JPEG2000. This improves the robustness against quality scalability of JPEG2000 compression. The simulation results verify the feasibility of the proposed concept, its applications, and its improved robustness against quality scalable content adaptation. Our proposed algorithm also outperforms existing methods showing 35% improvement. In terms of robustness to quality scalable video content adaptation using Motion JPEG2000 and wavelet-based scalable video coding, the proposed method shows major improvement for video watermarking.