Fast Fragile Watermark Embedding and Iterative Mechanism With High Self-Restoration Performance

This paper presents a new algorithm to reduce significantly the computational cost of one of the best methods with self-recovery capabilities in the fragile watermarking literature. This is achieved by generating two sequences of reference bits associated to the 5 most significant bit-planes (MSBPs) of the image. The reference bits and some authentication bits are then allocated to the 3 least significant bit-planes (LSBPs) of the image. The receiver uses the authentication bits to localise altered pixel-blocks and then executes an iterative restoration mechanism to calculate the original value of the watermarked pixels. Experimental results demonstrate that the embedding method executes significantly faster compared to the state-of-the-art method while achieving a high restoration performance

Digital watermarking in medical images

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University, 05/12/2005.This thesis addresses authenticity and integrity of medical images using watermarking. Hospital Information Systems (HIS), Radiology Information Systems (RIS) and Picture Archiving and Communication Systems (P ACS) now form the information infrastructure for today's healthcare as these provide new ways to store, access and distribute medical data that also involve some security risk. Watermarking can be seen as an additional tool for security measures. As the medical tradition is very strict with the quality of biomedical images, the watermarking method must be reversible or if not, region of Interest (ROI) needs to be defined and left intact. Watermarking should also serve as an integrity control and should be able to authenticate the medical image. Three watermarking techniques were proposed. First, Strict Authentication Watermarking (SAW) embeds the digital signature of the image in the ROI and the image can be reverted back to its original value bit by bit if required. Second, Strict Authentication Watermarking with JPEG Compression (SAW-JPEG) uses the same principal as SAW, but is able to survive some degree of JPEG compression. Third, Authentication Watermarking with Tamper Detection and Recovery (AW-TDR) is able to localise tampering, whilst simultaneously reconstructing the original image

Optimisation of Tamper Localisation and Recovery Watermarking Techniques

Digital watermarking has found many applications in many fields, such as: copyright tracking, media authentication, tamper localisation and recovery, hardware control, and data hiding. The idea of digital watermarking is to embed arbitrary data inside a multimedia cover without affecting the perceptibility of the multimedia cover itself. The main advantage of using digital watermarking over other techniques, such as signature based techniques, is that the watermark is embedded into the multimedia cover itself and will not be removed even with the format change. Image watermarking techniques are categorised according to their robustness against modification into: fragile, semi-fragile, and robust watermarking. In fragile watermarking any change to the image will affect the watermark, this makes fragile watermarking very useful in image authentication applications, as in medical and forensic fields, where any tampering of the image is: detected, localised, and possibly recovered. Fragile watermarking techniques are also characterised by a higher capacity when compared to semi-fragile and robust watermarking. Semifragile watermarking techniques resist some modifications, such as lossy compression and low pass filtering. Semi-fragile watermarking can be used in authentication and copyright validation applications whenever the amount of embedded information is small and the expected modifications are not severe. Robust watermarking techniques are supposed to withstand more severe modifications, such as rotation and geometrical bending. Robust watermarking is used in copyright validation applications, where copyright information in the image must remains accessible even after severe modification. This research focuses on the application of image watermarking in tamper localisation and recovery and it aims to provide optimisation for some of its aspects. The optimisation aims to produce watermarking techniques that enhance one or more of the following aspects: consuming less payload, having better recovery quality, recovering larger tampered area, requiring less calculations, and being robust against the different counterfeiting attacks. Through the survey of the main existing techniques, it was found that most of them are using two separate sets of data for the localisation and the recovery of the tampered area, which is considered as a redundancy. The main focus in this research is to investigate employing image filtering techniques in order to use only one set of data for both purposes, leading to a reduced redundancy in the watermark embedding and enhanced capacity. Four tamper localisation and recovery techniques were proposed, three of them use one set of data for localisation and recovery while the fourth one is designed to be optimised and gives a better performance even though it uses separate sets of data for localisation and recovery. The four techniques were analysed and compared to two recent techniques in the literature. The performance of the proposed techniques vary from one technique to another. The fourth technique shows the best results regarding recovery quality and Probability of False Acceptance (PFA) when compared to the other proposed techniques and the two techniques in the literature, also, all proposed techniques show better recovery quality when compared to the two techniques in the literature

A Feature-Based Fragile Watermarking of Color Image for Secure E-Government Restoration

this research developed a method using fragile watermarking technique for color images to achieve secure e-government tamper detection with recovery capability. Before performing the watermark insertion process, the RGB image is converted first into YCbCr image. The watermark component is selected from the image feature that approximates the original image, in which the chrominance value features as a watermark component. For a better detection process, 3-tuple watermark, check bits, parity bits, and recovery bits are selected. The average block in each 2 x 2 pixels is selected as 8 restoration bits of each component, the embedding process work on the pixels by modifying the pixels value of three Least Significant Bit (LSB) . The secret key for secure tamper detection and recovery, transmitted along with the watermarked image, and the algorithm mixture is used to extract information at the receiving end. The results show remarkably effective to restore tampered image

Digital watermarking in medical images

This thesis addresses authenticity and integrity of medical images using watermarking. Hospital Information Systems (HIS), Radiology Information Systems (RIS) and Picture Archiving and Communication Systems (P ACS) now form the information infrastructure for today's healthcare as these provide new ways to store, access and distribute medical data that also involve some security risk. Watermarking can be seen as an additional tool for security measures. As the medical tradition is very strict with the quality of biomedical images, the watermarking method must be reversible or if not, region of Interest (ROI) needs to be defined and left intact. Watermarking should also serve as an integrity control and should be able to authenticate the medical image. Three watermarking techniques were proposed. First, Strict Authentication Watermarking (SAW) embeds the digital signature of the image in the ROI and the image can be reverted back to its original value bit by bit if required. Second, Strict Authentication Watermarking with JPEG Compression (SAW-JPEG) uses the same principal as SAW, but is able to survive some degree of JPEG compression. Third, Authentication Watermarking with Tamper Detection and Recovery (AW-TDR) is able to localise tampering, whilst simultaneously reconstructing the original image.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Spread spectrum-based video watermarking algorithms for copyright protection

Merged with duplicate record 10026.1/2263 on 14.03.2017 by CS (TIS)Digital technologies know an unprecedented expansion in the last years. The consumer can now benefit from hardware and software which was considered state-of-the-art several years ago. The advantages offered by the digital technologies are major but the same digital technology opens the door for unlimited piracy. Copying an analogue VCR tape was certainly possible and relatively easy, in spite of various forms of protection, but due to the analogue environment, the subsequent copies had an inherent loss in quality. This was a natural way of limiting the multiple copying of a video material. With digital technology, this barrier disappears, being possible to make as many copies as desired, without any loss in quality whatsoever. Digital watermarking is one of the best available tools for fighting this threat. The aim of the present work was to develop a digital watermarking system compliant with the recommendations drawn by the EBU, for video broadcast monitoring. Since the watermark can be inserted in either spatial domain or transform domain, this aspect was investigated and led to the conclusion that wavelet transform is one of the best solutions available. Since watermarking is not an easy task, especially considering the robustness under various attacks several techniques were employed in order to increase the capacity/robustness of the system: spread-spectrum and modulation techniques to cast the watermark, powerful error correction to protect the mark, human visual models to insert a robust mark and to ensure its invisibility. The combination of these methods led to a major improvement, but yet the system wasn't robust to several important geometrical attacks. In order to achieve this last milestone, the system uses two distinct watermarks: a spatial domain reference watermark and the main watermark embedded in the wavelet domain. By using this reference watermark and techniques specific to image registration, the system is able to determine the parameters of the attack and revert it. Once the attack was reverted, the main watermark is recovered. The final result is a high capacity, blind DWr-based video watermarking system, robust to a wide range of attacks.BBC Research & Developmen