Robust hybrid watermarking for image authentication using DWT-DCT-SVD and cryptography

This paper contrasts the implementation of several chaos-based digital image watermarking techniques in terms of imperceptibility, robustness, security and complexity. Most spatial and transform domains methods have been used namely Least Significant Bit (LSB), Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT), Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT) and Redundant Discrete Wavelet Transform (RDWT) with Singular Value Decomposition (SVD) mathematical tool which has enhanced embedding capability. Both continuous and discrete chaotic maps namely Arnold's Chaotic Map (ACM), Logistic Chaotic map (LCM) and Lorenz Chaotic Map (LoCM) are included to result in secure schemes. Exhaustive series of tests have been performed along with a range of evaluation metrics for imperceptibility evaluation. In addition, Robustness of all the techniques has also been confirmed by applying a variety of attacks on the resulting images. This study will help to adopt the most suitable methods for a given application as sufficient number of test images have been utilized.

Watermarking is crucial for protecting medical images, guaranteeing data integrity and authenticity in telemedicine, especially for rural healthcare facilities with limited computational power. This paper introduces a lightweight watermarking scheme that performs a comparative study of Lifting Wavelet Transform (LWT) versus Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT), both combined with Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT), to achieve optimal imperceptibility, robustness, and computational efficiency. The comparison of LWT and DWT is essential because LWT has lower computational complexity and memory usage, hence more appropriate for resource-limited environments than DWT, and without the use of Singular Value Decomposition (SVD) to further reduce processing requirements and improve compatibility with low-power devices. The suggested approach adopts adaptive embedding against texture complexity, secure synchronization patterns with m-sequences and Barker codes, and geometric correction utilizing ORB for guaranteed watermark extraction under attacks from JPEG compression, Gaussian noise attack, rotation attack, median filter attack, and Gaussian blur. A new error correction code interleaved with majority voting is employed to increase the watermark’s strength. Tested at various embedding strengths, the scheme attains Peak Signal to Noise Ratio (PSNR) values over 40 dB and Structural Similarity Index (SSIM) values above 0.95, signifying extremely little visual degradation. Low Bit Error Rates (BER) and high Normalized Correlation (NC) in various attack scenarios validate its success. This computational-friendly solution is designed to arm remote healthcare organizations with limited computer ability to reliably authenticate and attest to medical images, meeting severe telemedicine demands.

Confidentiality of Electronic Health Record (EHR) and privacy are two important security requirements for healthcare systems. Many devices on the EHR network utilize little or no encryption, which makes data in transit vulnerable to exploitative attacks, such as Man-in-the-Middle and other filtration methods. Recently, watermarking algorithms as an efficient response to these requirements is in the underline. In this paper, we present a robust watermarking method conceived as part of an Electronic Health Record platform. In this method a chaotic encryption and blind medical image watermarking technique was incorporated into the system as an authorization mechanism to ensure confidentiality and integrity of electronic health information. We present a hybrid watermarking method based on a combination of discrete wavelet transform (DWT), hessenberg Decomposition (HD), Singular value decomposition (SVD) and an original chaos crypto system based on the Arnold Transform (AT) of Singular Value Decomposition. In order to spread the robustness of our algorithm and provide additional security, an improved SVD-AT embedding and extraction procedure has been used to scramble the EHR data in the preprocessing step of the proposed method. In the process of watermark embedding, an R-level discrete wavelet transform was applied to the host image. The low frequency wavelet coefficients are selected to carry this scrambled-watermark. In extraction process, the stored used plain image is obtained from the trusted authority server to complete the verification process. The receiver should compare the unsigned watermark with the extracted watermark again. The verification can be done before clinical procedures and diagnosis. The proposed watermarking method endures entirety attacks and rightly extracts the hidden watermark without significant degradation in the image quality, thus, when the Peak Signal to Noise Ratio (PSNR) and Normalized Correlation (NC) performance of the proposed algorithm is performed.

In this paper, a new robust and secure video watermarking scheme based on discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT), singular value decomposition (SVD), and Laplacian pyramid is proposed for copyright protection applications. The main contributions of this work are: 1) Increasing watermark robustness towards common signal processing attacks by separating the watermark image into a high-frequency image and a low-frequency image using laplacian pyramid. Then, the singular values of each of the low-frequency watermark image and the high-frequency watermark image are hidden in two different DWT subbands of the original video frame. Separating the watermark and hiding its two parts in two different subbands of the DWT of the video frame makes it robust towards noise, filtering, and compression attacks. 2) Improving the quality of the extracted watermarks via correcting the received watermarked videos using SURF points when those videos are geometrically attacked, mainly by rotation, scaling, and shear attacks. 3) Increasing security and avoiding false positive problems (FPP) associated with SVD by using perceptual image hashing in the proposed scheme. Through experimental results and comparisons to other techniques, the proposed scheme has shown very high imperceptibility for the tested watermarked videos in terms of peak signal to noise ratio (PSNR). Also, the proposed scheme has demonstrated high watermark robustness towards various types of attacks, and an improvement in the quality of the extracted watermarks from 4 to 20 dB compared to other techniques.

In this proposed work, a dual image watermarking algorithm is used to protect the data against copyright violations. In this work, the DICOM image is used as a host image. Two watermark images used are the MNNIT logo and the personal data of the patient. This method utilizes the advantages of Schur decomposition, lifting wavelet transform (LWT), discrete cosine transform (DCT) and singular value decomposition (SVD). The scaling factor is a vital parameter of watermarking technique. The firefly optimization technique is used to get the optimized scaling factor. The Speeded-up robust features (SURF) are used for watermarking authentication. To evaluate the performance of the proposed algorithm, peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR), normalized correlation coefficient (NCC), and structural similarity index measurement (SSIM) are used. The proposed method is tested against various attacks such as Salt and Pepper noise, Gaussian noise, Gaussian low pass filter, Average filter, Median filter, Histogram equalization, Sharpening, Rotation and Region of interest filtering. The proposed algorithm shows a high level of robustness and imperceptibility. It is found that the features of the input host image and the watermarked image are matching correctly on applying the SURF technique.

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.

The technique used to hide copyright information (watermark) into the digital audio signal is termed as audio watermarking. Audio watermarking is an excellent approach to provide a solution to mitigate challenges that occur from easy copying and distribution of audio files that are being downloaded or uploaded through the web. The audio watermarking algorithms proposed earlier were implemented by image or binary logo or a unique pattern as watermark. To tackle the difficulty of online musical piracy, unethical attempt to alter purposefully copyrighted audio data and unauthorized distribution and tampering of audio files an efficient audio watermarking method is suggested here. In this method the copyright information (watermark) which is an audio signal of shorter length is imperceptibly added into the original audio signal with greater duration. Here two audio watermarking methods using DCT (Discrete Cosine Transform) and then with DWT-SVD (Discrete Wavelet Transform — singular value decomposition) methods are proposed with audio signal encrypted with secure hash algorithm as watermark. A comparative study on performance evaluation of both DCT and DWT-SVD methods are made in terms of PSNR (Peak-Signal to Noise Ratio) and MSE (Mean Square Error). The results show that transparency is best for each methods and DWT-SVD method is more efficient against signal attacks. The elementary notion of this document is to provide a beneficial and satisfactory method for secure audio file transmission by providing copyright protection.

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.

Communication of the images over the network calls for an approach to ensure security and ownership protection while exchanging images over the network. This paper proposes an improved blind watermarking scheme capable of offering image authentication, protection, and detachment avoidance between the watermark and its corresponding image. The proposed technique is composed of three modules; generator, protector, and resizer. The generator deals with embedding and extracting the watermark from the host image. Protector deals with encryption and decryption using a high dimensional chaotic system. And resizer deals with compressing and decompressing the watermarked image. The novelty related scientific literature is the encryption of Singular Value Decomposition (SVD) components, and watermark in a criss-cross manner using logistic map along with hyperchaotic system to achieve the confidentiality and avoid false positive problem (FPP). Whereas, embedding into RGB (red, green, blue components) is centered on singular value decomposition and level-2 Discrete Wavelet Transform. The joint operation is performed at sender’s side and receiver’s side, i.e., encryption, embedding, and compression is performed at sender’s side whereas decompression and decryption procedures are performed at the receiver’s side. Additionally, compressing the data reduces the higher bandwidth requirements. The performance of the proposed scheme is based on subjective and objective evaluation. Experimental results such as PSNR (peak signal-to-noise ratio), NC (normalized correlation), BER (bit error rate), CR (compression ratio), NPCR (number of pixel change rate), and SSIM (structural similarity index) indicate that the proposed technique approaches the standard main level.

Most Discrete Wavelet Transform(DWT)/Singular Value Decomposition(SVD) watermark methods are robust to common attacks, such as loss compression, noise and filtering attacks, but they cannot resist geometrical attacks. As Scale Invariant Feature Transform(SIFT) feature points are invariant to rotation, scaling and translation, a blind DWT-SVD watermark method against geometrical attacks based on SIFT is proposed. The square of the inscribed circle of the host image matrix is chosen as the watermark embedding area. Firstly, the watermark embedding area is decomposed with 1-level DWT and the low-frequency sub-band is divided into non-overlapping blocks; then the SVD is applied to every block. Secondly, the watermark is embedded by quantifying the maximum singular value of each block. Finally, SIFT feature points of the watermarked image are saved to detect and correct possible geometrical attacks. The experimental results show that the proposed method not only has the robustness to any angle of rotation attacks, wide range of scaling attacks and translation attacks, but also can achieve blind extraction.

WITHDRAWN: Contrasting the performance metrics of discrete transformations on digital image steganography using artificial intelligence

In order to analyze medical images zero watermarks, the contribution of this research used ResNet101-DCT (Discrete Cosine Transform) in combination with the discrete wavelet transform (DWT). A pre-training network called ResNet101 is also used for the extraction of deep medical image features the vector of feature set is constructed a perceptual hash (*) function after the feature rearrange utilizing (DWT) and (DCT). It is necessary to create and maintain a key vector, randomly generate the watermark, and include an X-OR gate in order to encrypt the medical image's watermark. The feature attributes approach is used to find the relevant properties of the medical image being analyzed before constructing a feature vector. We may create an encrypted watermark by XORing the feature vector with the logical-key-vector. After decoding the encrypted watermark, it may be used to determine who owns the watermark and ownership information for the medical image by computing the normalized correlation (NC) coefficient. In most cases, the NC value will be higher than 50%.

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.

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

This paper presents a new robust hybrid multiple watermarking technique using fusion of discrete wavelet transforms (DWT), discrete cosine transforms (DCT), and singular value decomposition (SVD) instead of applying DWT, DCT and SVD individually or combination of DWT-SVD / DCT-SVD. For identity authentication purposes, multiple watermarks are embedded into the same medical image / multimedia objects simultaneously, which provides extra level of security with acceptable performance in terms of robustness and imperceptibility. In the embedding process, the cover image is decomposed into first level discrete wavelet transforms where the A (approximation/lower frequency sub-band) is transformed by DCT and SVD. The watermark image is also transformed by DWT, DCT and SVD. The S vector of watermark information is embedded in the S component of the cover image. The watermarked image is generated by inverse SVD on modified S vector and original U, V vectors followed by inverse DCT and inverse DWT. The watermark is extracted using an extraction algorithm. Furthermore, the text watermark is embedding at the second level of the D (diagonal sub-band) of the cover image. The security of the text watermark considered as EPR (Electronic Patient Record) data is enhanced by using encryption method before embedding into the cover. The results are obtained by varying the gain factor, size of the text watermark, and cover medical images. The method has been extensively tested and analyzed against known attacks and is found to be giving superior performance for robustness, capacity and reduced storage and bandwidth requirements compared to reported techniques suggested by other authors.