An adaptive watermarking approach based on weighted quantum particle swarm optimization

In this paper, we propose a novel optimal singular value decomposition (SVD)-based image watermarking approach that uses a new combination of weighted quantum particle swarm optimization (WQPSO) algorithm and a human visual system (HVS) model for both the hybrid discrete wavelet transform and discrete cosine transform (DCT). The proposed SVD-based watermarking approach initially decomposes the host image into sub-bands; afterwards, singular values of the DCT of the lower sub-band of the host image are quantized using a set of optimal quantization steps deduced from a combination of the WQPSO algorithm and the HVS model. To evaluate the performance of the proposed approach, we present tests on different images. The experimental results show that the proposed approach yields a watermarked image with good visual definition; at the same time, the embedded watermark was robust against a wide variety of common attacks, including JPEG compression, Gaussian noise, salt and pepper noises, Gaussian filters, median filters, image cropping, and image scaling. Moreover, the results of various experimental analyses demonstrated the superiority of the WQPSO approach over other optimization techniques, including classical PSO and QPSO in terms of local convergence speed, resulting in a better balance between global and local searches of the watermarking algorithm.