PSO Based Lossless and Robust Image Watermarking using Integer Wavelet Transform

In recent days, the advances in the broadcasting of multimedia contents in digital format motivate to protect this digital multimedia content form illegal use, such as manipulation, duplication and redistribution. However, watermarking algorithms are designed to meet the requirements of different applications, because, various applications have various requirements. This paper intends to design a new watermarking algorithm with an aim of provision of a tradeoff between the robustness and imperceptibility and also to reduce the information loss. This approach applies Integer Wavelet Transform (IWT) instead of conventional floating point wavelet transforms which are having main drawback of round of error. Then the most popular artificial intelligence technique, particle swarm optimization (PSO) used for optimization of watermarking strength. The strength of watermarking technique is directly related to the watermarking constant alpha. The PSO optimizes alpha values such that, the proposed approach achieves better robustness over various attacks and an also efficient imperceptibility. Numerous experiments are conducted over the proposed approach to evaluate the performance. The obtained experimental results demonstrates that the proposed approach is superior compared to conventional approach and is able to provide efficient resistance over Gaussian noise, sal

Resilient Digital Image Watermarking for Document Authentication

Abstract—We consider the applications of the Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) and then a Chirp coding method for producing a highly robust system for watermarking images using a block partitioning approach subject to a self-alignment strategy and bit error correction. The applications for the algorithms presented and the system developed include the copyright protection of images and Digital Right Management for image libraries, for example. However, the principal focus of the research reported in this paper is on the use of printscan and e-display-scan image authentication for use in e-tickets where QR code, for example, are embedded in a full colour image of the ticket holder. This requires that an embedding procedure is developed that is highly robust to blur, noise, geometric distortions such as rotation, shift and barrel and the partial removal of image segments, all of which are considered in regard to the resilience of the method proposed and its practical realisation in a real operating environment

QAM-DWT-SVD Based Watermarking Scheme for Medical Images

This paper presents a new semi-blind image watermarking system for medical applications. The new scheme utilizes Singular Value Decomposition (SVD) and Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT) to embed a textual data into original medical images. In particular, text characters are encoded by a Quadrature Amplitude Modulation (QAM-16). In order to increase the security of the system and protect then the watermark from several attacks, the embedded data is submitted to Arnold Transform before inserting it into the host medical image. To evaluate the performances of the scheme, several medical images have been used in the experiments. Simulation results show that the proposed watermarking system ensures good imperceptibility and high robustness against several attacks

Data hiding in images based on fractal modulation and diversity combining

The current work provides a new data-embedding infrastructure based on fractal modulation. The embedding problem is tackled from a communications point of view. The data to be embedded becomes the signal to be transmitted through a watermark channel. The channel could be the image itself or some manipulation of the image. The image self noise and noise due to attacks are the two sources of noise in this paradigm. At the receiver, the image self noise has to be suppressed, while noise due to the attacks may sometimes be predicted and inverted. The concepts of fractal modulation and deterministic self-similar signals are extended to 2-dimensional images. These novel techniques are used to build a deterministic bi-homogenous watermark signal that embodies the binary data to be embedded. The binary data to be embedded, is repeated and scaled with different amplitudes at each level and is used as the wavelet decomposition pyramid. The binary data is appended with special marking data, which is used during demodulation, to identify and correct unreliable or distorted blocks of wavelet coefficients. This specially constructed pyramid is inverted using the inverse discrete wavelet transform to obtain the self-similar watermark signal. In the data embedding stage, the well-established linear additive technique is used to add the watermark signal to the cover image, to generate the watermarked (stego) image. Data extraction from a potential stego image is done using diversity combining. Neither the original image nor the original binary sequence (or watermark signal) is required during the extraction. A prediction of the original image is obtained using a cross-shaped window and is used to suppress the image self noise in the potential stego image. The resulting signal is then decomposed using the discrete wavelet transform. The number of levels and the wavelet used are the same as those used in the watermark signal generation stage. A thresholding process similar to wavelet de-noising is used to identify whether a particular coefficient is reliable or not. A decision is made as to whether a block is reliable or not based on the marking data present in each block and sometimes corrections are applied to the blocks. Finally the selected blocks are combined based on the diversity combining strategy to extract the embedded binary data

SYNTEZA OPTYMALNEJ METODY STEGANOGRAFII WEDŁUG WYBRANYCH KRYTERIÓW

One of the steganography areas is digital watermarking. In this paper, the technique of comparative analysis of embedding information methods into an image was proposed. A comprehensive analysis of the most relevant steganographic methods of hiding information was made. Own method of embedding information in still images was synthesized. The possibility of studied methods to adapt to the real channels was evaluated for the first time. The robustness and security of steganographic systems based on the proposed method were also demonstrated.Jednym z obszarów steganografii jest osadzanie cyfrowych znaków wodnych. W niniejszej pracy zaproponowano metodykę analizy porównawczej metod osadzania informacji w obrazach. Została dokonana wszechstronna analiza najnowszych metod ukrywania informacji za pomocą steganografii. Opracowano własną metodę osadzania informacji w nieruchomych obrazach. Oceniono możliwość adaptowania się metod do charakterystyk rzeczywistych kanałów komunikacyjnych. Wykazano wiarygodność i bezpieczeństwo systemów steganograficznych wykorzystujących proponowaną metodę

On the application of two dimensional chirplets for resilient digital image watermarking

Chirplets (swept-frequency harmonic signals) find applications in several areas, including real and synthetic aperture radar, (Fresnel) optics and image processing. The robustness of chirplets to extreme (additive) noise make them an ideal choice in the role of embedding patterns for resilient digital signal and image watermarking. In this paper we present a new watermarking technique which is based on embedding twodimensional chirplet coded binary sequences in digital images. This approach provides a pattern embedded recovery algorithm which is robust to a variety of distortions. However, chirplets have certain parameters that need to be specified, and, given a set of target characteristics, some particular chirplet parameters can be considered optimal. This paper reports on the optimisation of both the chirplet sets and their associated parameters focusing on a classification of their resilience to image distortion