Towards Optimal Copyright Protection Using Neural Networks Based Digital Image Watermarking

In the field of digital watermarking, digital image watermarking for copyright protection has attracted a lot of attention in the research community. Digital watermarking contains varies techniques for protecting the digital content. Among all those techniques,Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT) provides higher image imperceptibility and robustness. Over the years, researchers have been designing watermarking techniques with robustness in mind, in order for the watermark to be resistant against any image processing techniques. Furthermore, the requirements of a good watermarking technique includes a tradeoff between robustness, image quality (imperceptibility) and capacity. In this paper, we have done an extensive literature review for the existing DWT techniques and those combined with other techniques such as Neural Networks. In addition to that, we have discuss the contribution of Neural Networks in copyright protection. Finally we reached our goal in which we identified the research gaps existed in the current watermarking schemes. So that, it will be easily to obtain an optimal techniques to make the watermark object robust to attacks while maintaining the imperceptibility to enhance the copyright protection

Application of Stochastic Diffusion for Hiding High Fidelity Encrypted Images

Cryptography coupled with information hiding has received increased attention in recent years and has become a major research theme because of the importance of protecting encrypted information in any Electronic Data Interchange system in a way that is both discrete and covert. One of the essential limitations in any cryptography system is that the encrypted data provides an indication on its importance which arouses suspicion and makes it vulnerable to attack. Information hiding of Steganography provides a potential solution to this issue by making the data imperceptible, the security of the hidden information being a threat only if its existence is detected through Steganalysis. This paper focuses on a study methods for hiding encrypted information, specifically, methods that encrypt data before embedding in host data where the ‘data’ is in the form of a full colour digital image. Such methods provide a greater level of data security especially when the information is to be submitted over the Internet, for example, since a potential attacker needs to first detect, then extract and then decrypt the embedded data in order to recover the original information. After providing an extensive survey of the current methods available, we present a new method of encrypting and then hiding full colour images in three full colour host images with out loss of fidelity following data extraction and decryption. The application of this technique, which is based on a technique called ‘Stochastic Diffusion’ are wide ranging and include covert image information interchange, digital image authentication, video authentication, copyright protection and digital rights management of image data in general

Watermarking scheme using slantlet transform and enhanced knight tour algorithm for medical images

Digital watermarking has been employed as an alternative solution to protect the medical healthcare system with a layer of protection applied directly on top of data stored. Medical image that is highly sensitive to the image processing and cannot tolerate any visual degradation has become the focus of digital watermarking. However, since watermarking introduces some changes on medical images, it is a challenge for medical image watermarking to maintain high imperceptibility and robustness at the same time. Research to date has tended to focus on the embedding method instead of the sequence of embedding of the watermarking itself. Also, although watermarking has been introduced into medical images as a layer of protection, it still cannot prevent a knowledgeable hacker from retrieving the watermark. Therefore, this research proposes a robust watermarking scheme with high imperceptibility for medical images to increase the effectiveness of the medical healthcare system in terms of perceptibility, embedding technique, embedding region and embedding sequence of the watermarking scheme. To increase imperceptibility of a watermark, this research introduces Dynamic Visibility Threshold, a new parameter that increases visual quality in terms of imperceptibility. It is a unique number which differs for each host image using descriptive statistics. In addition, two new concepts of embedding region, namely Embeddable zone (EBD) and Non-Embeddable zone (NEBD) to function as a non-parametric decision region to complicate the estimate of the detection function are also proposed. The sequence of embedding is shuffled using enhanced Knight Tour algorithm based on Slantlet Transform to increase the complexity of the watermarking scheme. A significant result from the Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratio (PSNR) evaluation showing approximately 270 dB was obtained, suggesting that this proposed medical image watermarking technique outperforms other contemporary techniques in the same working domain. Based on the experimental result using the standard dataset, all host images are resilient to Salt and Pepper Noise, Speckle Noise, Poisson Noise, Rotation and Sharpen Filter with minimum Bit Error Rate (BER) of 0.0426 and Normalized Cross-Correlation (NCC) value of as high as 1. Since quartile theory is used, this experiment has shown that among all three quartiles, the Third Quartile performs the best in functioning as Dynamic Visibility Threshold (DVT) with 0 for BER and 1 for NCC evaluation

New Digital Audio Watermarking Algorithms for Copyright Protection

This thesis investigates the development of digital audio watermarking in addressing issues such as copyright protection. Over the past two decades, many digital watermarking algorithms have been developed, each with its own advantages and disadvantages. The main aim of this thesis was to develop a new watermarking algorithm within an existing Fast Fourier Transform framework. This resulted in the development of a Complex Spectrum Phase Evolution based watermarking algorithm. In this new implementation, the embedding positions were generated dynamically thereby rendering it more difficult for an attacker to remove, and watermark information was embedded by manipulation of the spectral components in the time domain thereby reducing any audible distortion. Further improvements were attained when the embedding criteria was based on bin location comparison instead of magnitude, thereby rendering it more robust against those attacks that interfere with the spectral magnitudes. However, it was discovered that this new audio watermarking algorithm has some disadvantages such as a relatively low capacity and a non-consistent robustness for different audio files. Therefore, a further aim of this thesis was to improve the algorithm from a different perspective. Improvements were investigated using an Singular Value Decomposition framework wherein a novel observation was discovered. Furthermore, a psychoacoustic model was incorporated to suppress any audible distortion. This resulted in a watermarking algorithm which achieved a higher capacity and a more consistent robustness. The overall result was that two new digital audio watermarking algorithms were developed which were complementary in their performance thereby opening more opportunities for further research

Tatouage numérique des images dans le domaine des ondelettes basé sur la décomposition en valeurs singulières et l'optimisation multi-objective

Depuis l'extraordinaire révolution technique de l'analogique vers le numérique à la fin du 20ième siècle, les documents numériques sont devenus de plus en plus utilisés à cause de leur diffusion peu coûteuse et extrêmement rapide. Cependant ce passage de l'analogique vers le numérique ne s'est pas fait sans engendrer des inquiétudes en terme des droits d'auteurs. Des personnes non autorisées peuvent s'approprier des documents numériques pour faire des profits au dépends des propriétaires légitimes ayant les droits initiaux, puisque son contenu peut être facilement copié, modifié et distribué sans risque d'être détérioré. Dans cette optique, au début des années 1990, une nouvelle technique a été introduite qui s'inspire principalement de la cryptographie et la stéganographie : elle consiste à inscrire une marque dans un document numérique. Cette technique est nommée le tatouage numérique, en anglais digital watermarking. Cette thèse présente cinq différentes contributions relatives au domaine du tatouage numérique et du traitement d'image. La première contribution est la proposition de deux solutions au problème de la détection positive fausse de la marque constatée dans certains algorithmes de tatouage numérique basés sur la décomposition en valeurs singulières. L'une des solutions est basée sur les fonctions de hachage et l'autre sur le cryptage d'image. La deuxième contribution est la proposition d'un algorithme de cryptage d'image basé sur le principe du cube Rubik. La troisième contribution est la conception d'un algorithme de tatouage numérique basé sur la transformée en ondelettes à base du schéma de lifting (LWT) et la décomposition en valeurs singulières (SVD). Un facteur scalaire unique est utilisé pour contrôler l'intensité de l'insertion de la marque, et permet ainsi de trouver le meilleur compromis entre la robustesse et l'imperceptibilité du tatouage numérique. Cependant, l'utilisation des facteurs scalaires multiples au lieu d'un facteur scalaire unique est plus intéressante [CKLS97]. Toutefois, la détermination des valeurs optimales des facteurs scalaires multiples est un problème très difficile et complexe. Afin de trouver ces valeurs optimales, on a utilisé séparément l'optimisation multi-objective par algorithme génétique (MOGAO) et l'optimisation multi-objective par l'algorithme de colonie de fourmis (MOACO) qui sont considérés comme la quatrième et la cinquième contributions de cette thèse

Digital watermarking methods for data security and authentication

Philosophiae Doctor - PhDCryptology is the study of systems that typically originate from a consideration of the ideal circumstances under which secure information exchange is to take place. It involves the study of cryptographic and other processes that might be introduced for breaking the output of such systems - cryptanalysis. This includes the introduction of formal mathematical methods for the design of a cryptosystem and for estimating its theoretical level of securit

Tatouage robuste d’images imprimées

Invisible watermarking for ID images printed on plastic card support is a challenging problem that interests the industrial world. In this study, we developed a watermarking algorithm robust to various attacks present in this case. These attacks are mainly related to the print/scan process on the plastic support and the degradations that an ID card can encounter along its lifetime. The watermarking scheme operates in the Fourier domain as this transform has invariance properties against global geometrical transformations. A preventive method consists of pre-processing the host image before the embedding process that reduces the variance of the embeddable vector. A curative method comprises two counterattacks dealing with blurring and color variations. For a false alarm probability of 10⁻⁴, we obtained an average improvement of 22% over the reference method when only preventative method is used. The combination of the preventive and curative methods leads to a detection rate greater than 99%. The detection algorithm takes less than 1 second for a 512×512 image with a conventional computer, which is compatible with the industrial application in question.Le tatouage invisible d’images d’identité imprimées sur un support en plastique est un problème difficile qui intéresse le monde industriel. Dans cette étude, nous avons développé un algorithme de tatouage robuste aux diverses attaques présentes dans ce cas. Ces attaques sont liées aux processus d’impression/numérisation sur le support plastique ainsi qu’aux dégradations qu’une carte plastique peut rencontrer le long de sa durée de vie. La méthode de tatouage opère dans le domaine de Fourier car cette transformée présente des propriétés d’invariances aux attaques géométriques globales. Une méthode préventive consiste en un prétraitement de l’image originale avant le processus d’insertion qui réduit la variance du vecteur support de la marque. Une méthode corrective comporte deux contre-attaques corrigeant le flou et les variations colorimétriques. Pour une probabilité de fausse alarme de 10⁻⁴, nous avons obtenu une amélioration moyenne de 22% par rapport à la méthode de référence lorsque seule la méthode préventive est utilisée. La combinaison de la méthode préventive avec la méthode corrective correspond à un taux de détection supérieur à 99%. L’algorithme de détection prends moins de 1 seconde pour à une image de 512×512 pixels avec un ordinateur classique ce qui est compatible avec l’application industrielle visée