Print-scan invariant text image watermarking for hardcopy document authentication

Multimedia Tools and Applications - In this paper, a novel contour feature-based text image watermarking scheme against print and scan processes is proposed. We employ a mathematical multiplicative...     

Multipurpose watermarking for vector map protection and authentication

Multimedia Tools and Applications - The rapid flourishing of GIS applications has made the copyright protection and content authentication of vector maps two important issues in the digital world....     

An adaptive watermarking scheme for e-government document images

This paper proposes an adaptive watermarking scheme for e-government document images. The adaptive scheme combines the discrete cosine transform (DCT) and the singular value decomposition (SVD) using luminance masking. As a core of masking model in the human visual system (HVS), luminance masking is implemented to improve noise sensitivity. Genetic algorithm (GA), subsequently, is employed for the optimization of the scaling factor of the masking. Involving a number of steps, the scheme proposed through this study begins by calculating the mask of the host image using luminance masking. It is then continued by transforming the mask on each area into all frequencies domain. The watermark image, following this, is embedded by modifying the singular values of DCT-transformed host image with singular values of mask coefficient of host image and the control parameter of DCT-transformed watermark image using Genetic Algorithm (GA). The use of both the singular values and the control parameter respectively, in this case, is not only to improve the sensitivity of the watermark performance but also to avoid the false positive problem. The watermark image, afterwards, is extracted from the distorted images. The experiment results show the improved adaptive performance of the proposed scheme is in resistant to several types of attacks in comparison with the previous schemes; the adaptive performance refers to the adaptive parameter of the luminance masking functioned to improve the performance or robustness of an image from any attacks.     

Hybrid watermarking of medical images for ROI authentication and recovery

Medical image data require strict security, confidentiality and integrity. To achieve these stringent requirements, we propose a hybrid watermarking method which embeds a robust watermark in the region of non-interest (RONI) for achieving security and confidentiality, while integrity control is achieved by inserting a fragile watermark into the region of the interest (ROI). First the information to be modified in ROI is separated and is inserted into RONI, which later is used in recovery of the original ROI. Secondly, to avoid the underflow and overflow, a location map is generated for embedding the watermark block-wise by leaving the suspected blocks. This avoids the preprocessing step of histogram modification. The image visual quality, as well as tamper localization, is evaluated. We use weighted peak signal to noise ratio for measuring image quality of watermarked images. Experimental results show that the proposed method outperforms the existing hybrid watermarking techniques.     

A multiple reversible watermarking technique for fingerprint authentication

The classical fingerprint recognition system can be compromised at the database and the sensor. Therefore, to beef up security of the fingerprint recognition system, reversible watermarking is proposed to protect these two points. Reversible watermarks thwart manipulations, \({viz}\)., copy and replay attacks and ensure that native fingerprint recognition accuracy remains unaffected. Fingerprint-dependent watermark \(W_1\) authenticates the database and shields it against the copy attack. The second watermark \(W_2\) verifies fingerprint captured by the sensor and foil replay attack. \(W_2\) is derived from the higher order moments of the fingerprint. Divergence in the computed and extracted watermarks indicates loss of authenticity. The experimental results validate proposed hypothesis.     

Adaptive reversible watermarking for authentication and privacy protection of medical records

Multimedia Tools and Applications - Medical systems, such as PACS or scanners, are vulnerable to security and forgery attacks. Consequently, medical records, such as patient information and medical...     

A novel CRT-based watermarking technique for authentication of multimedia contents

Digital watermarking techniques have been proposed as a solution to the problem of copyright protection of multimedia data. In this paper, we propose a novel Chinese remainder theorem (CRT)-based technique for digital watermarking. The use of CRT for this purpose provides additional security along with resistance to some familiar attacks. We have shown that this technique is quite resilient to addition of the noise. We have compared performance of the proposed technique with recently reported two singular value decomposition (SVD)-based watermarking techniques and shown its superior performance in terms of tampering assessment function (TAF), computational efficiency and peak signal to noise ratio (PSNR). For example, the embedding time of the proposed CRT-based scheme is 6 and 3 times faster than the SVD-based Schemes 1 and 2, respectively. This technique can also be applied to document, audio and video contents.     

Region-based reversible medical image watermarking algorithm for privacy protection and integrity authentication

Medical images are widely used in telemedicine, sharing and electronic transmission between hospitals. While enjoying convenience, medical images also face privacy disclosure, illegal copy and malicious tamper, etc. It is highly important to ensure privacy and integrity of medical images. Cogitating the above needs, a reversible medical image watermarking algorithm for privacy protection and integrity authentication is proposed. Firstly, the medical image is divided into the ROI (Region of Interest) and RONI (Region of Non-Interest) based on active contour model. Then, the proposed “Three-Dimensional Watermarks” are generated, including authentication watermark, restoration watermark and privacy watermark, which are produced by the novel Parallel Lattice Hash Function, the proposed Neighborhood Difference Method, and the proposed encryption algorithm, respectively. Moreover, “Double-Layer Reversible Embedding Strategy Based on Difference Expansion” is modified in ROI to improve embedding capacity, and “Histogram Modification Reversible Embedding Strategy of Difference Image” is modified to adaptively acquire four or more peak points, which is more flexible than common algorithms. Experimental results confirm the efficient of the proposed scheme, and demonstrate it not only realizes privacy protection, integrity authentication, reversibility, but also holds the characteristics of higher security, larger capacity and better restoration quality.

     

Slantlet based hybrid watermarking technique for medical images

Multimedia Tools and Applications - Watermarking techniques are widely used for copyright protection, confidentiality and integrity issues in medical field. Reversibility, robustness, embedding...     

Efficient SVD speech watermarking with encrypted images

This paper presents a new approach for speech signal watermarking using encrypted watermarks. The objective of this approach is to increase the degree of security of speech watermarking. In the proposed framework, watermark embedding is implemented with singular value decomposition due to its robustness to attacks. Moreover, two encryption schemes are tested for watermark image encryption; chaotic encryption due to its permutation nature and data encryption standard (DES) due to its diffusion nature. Overall and block-by-block watermarking scenarios are tested and compared for speech signal watermarking. Different modes of operation of the DES are investigated for watermark image encryption. These modes are the electronic code book, cipher block chaining, cipher feedback, and output feedback (OFB) modes. Simulation results reveal that the DES with OFB mode and the chaotic Baker map encryption make the system less sensitive to attacks with good quality of extracted watermarks.     

A digital authentication watermarking scheme for JPEG images with superior localization and security

The drawbacks of the current authentication watermarking schemes for JPEG images, which are inferior localization and the security flaws, are firstly analyzed in this paper. Then, two counterferiting attacks are conducted on them. To overcome these drawbacks, a new digital authentication watermarking scheme for JPEG images with superior localization and security is proposed. Moreover, the probabilities of tamper detection and false detection are deduced under region tampering and collage attack separately. For each image block, the proposed scheme keeps four middle frequency points fixed to embed the watermark, and utilizes the rest of the DCT coefficients to generate 4 bits of watermark information. During the embedding process, each watermark bit is embedded in another image block that is selected by its corresponding secret key. Since four blocks are randomly selected for the watermark embedding of each block, the non-deterministic dependence among the image blocks is established so as to resist collage attack completely. At the receiver, according to judging of the extracted 4 bits of watermark information and the corresponding 9-neighbourhood system, the proposed scheme could discriminate whether the image block is tampered or not. Owing to the diminishing of false detection and the holding of tamper detection, we improve the accuracy of localization in the authentication process. Theoretic analysis and simulation results have proved that the proposed algorithm not only has superior localization, but also enhances the systematic security obviously. Supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 60572027), the Program for New Century Excellent Talents in University of China (Grant No. NCET-05-0794), the Sichuan Youth Science & Technology Foundation (Grant No. 03ZQ026-033), the National Defense Pre-research Foundation of China (Grant No. 51430804QT2201) and the Application Basic Foundation of Sichuan Province, China (Grant No. 2006 J13-10)     

Adaptive removable visible watermarking technique using dual watermarking for digital color images

This paper proposes a removable visible watermarking system based on a dual watermark technique and blind removal. A visible watermark pattern is embedded in the cosine discrete transform (DCT) domain, taking into consideration the texture and luminance features of the watermark and host images to create a visible watermarked image. To prevent illegal visible watermark removal, the original watermark is embedded in an invisible manner in the visible watermarked image by employing the Quantization Index Modulation-Dither Modulation (QIM-DM) technique, thus ensuring that the original watermark cannot be obtained by malicious attacks. The visible watermark removal process is carried out using only the correct user’s keys, without the need for additional information, such as the original watermark or the original host image, which allows a high-quality image to be obtained; however, if the user’s keys used in the removal process are wrong, the visible watermarked image suffers higher distortion in its content, even in non-visible watermarked regions. The experimental results show that the proposed system outperforms previous related works in terms of blind removal, preservation of the quality of the unmarked recovered image, and higher visual degradation of the content in the recovered image if an illegal removal attempt is performed.     

An improved SVD-based watermarking technique for copyright protection

The drawbacks of SVD-based image watermarking are false positive, robust and transparency. The former can be overcome by embedding the principal components of the watermark into the host image, the latter is dependent on how much the quantity (i.e., scaling factor) of the principal components is embedded. For the existing methods, the scaling factor is a fixed value; actually, it is image-dependent. Different watermarks need the different scaling factors, although they are embedded in the same host image. In this paper, two methods are proposed to improve the reliability and robustness. To improve the reliability, for the first method, the principal components of the watermark are embedded into the host image in discrete cosine transform (DCT); and for the second method, those are embedded into the host image in discrete wavelets transform (DWT). To improve the robustness, the particle swarm optimization (PSO) is used for finding the suitable scaling factors. The experimental results demonstrate that the performance of the proposed methods outperforms than those of the existing methods.     

Visual attention model based dual watermarking for simultaneous image copyright protection and authentication

Multimedia Tools and Applications - In this paper, a visual attention model based dual watermarking scheme has been proposed for simultaneous image copyright protection and authentication. The...     

Adaptive thresholding algorithm: Efficient computation technique based on intelligent block detection for degraded document images

Document image binarization involves converting gray level images into binary images, which is a feature that has significantly impacted many portable devices in recent years, including PDAs and mobile camera phones. Given the limited memory space and the computational power of portable devices, reducing the computational complexity of an embedded system is of priority concern. This work presents an efficient document image binarization algorithm with low computational complexity and high performance. Integrating the advantages of global and local methods allows the proposed algorithm to divide the document image into several regions. A threshold surface is then constructed based on the diversity and the intensity of each region to derive the binary image. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method in providing a promising binarization outcome and low computational cost.     

Multi-block dependency based fragile watermarking scheme for fingerprint images protection

For traditional fragile watermarking schemes, isolated-block tamper which will destroy the minutiae of the fingerprint image can hardly be efficiently detected. In this paper, we propose a multi-block dependency based fragile watermarking scheme to overcome this shortcoming. The images are split into image blocks with size of 8 × 8; a 64-bit watermark is generated for each image block, and then equally partitioned into eight parts. Each part of the watermark is embedded into another image block which is selected by the corresponding secret key. Theoretic analysis and experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method not only can detect and localize the isolated-block tamper on fingerprint images with high detection probability and low false detection probability, but also enhances the systematic security obviously.     

Tamper detection and self-recovery of biometric images using salient region-based authentication watermarking scheme

Biometric images can be split into regions of salient (ROI) and regions of background (ROB) based on salient region detection. During the process of watermark embedding, salient regions which contain rich-information are less affected by the watermark, therefore can be embedded into more watermarks, and regions of background (ROB) are susceptible to the effect of watermarks, so that they should be embedded lighter or even none in order to preserve the recognition quality of biometric images. In this paper, a novel scheme for tamper detection and self-recovery of biometric images using salient region-based authentication watermarking is proposed. Firstly, we propose a novel multi-level authentication watermarking scheme, which is used to verify the integrity of biometric images. Secondly, biometric data of these biometric images which is used as information watermarks is embedded into themselves. As a result, verification systems can recover the damaged data of original biometric images with hidden information based on tampering detection result. Experimental results and theoretic analysis show that our proposed scheme can detect tampered regions, and recover biometric data while keeping the recognition quality.     

A voting-based technique for word spotting in handwritten document images

Multimedia Tools and Applications - Word spotting in handwritten document images is a field of immense interest due to its widespread applications. Recognition-free and recognition-based approaches...