An Optimized Image Watermarking Method Based on HD and SVD in DWT Domain

Abstract

In this paper, a novel image watermarking method is proposed which is based on discrete wave transformation (DWT), Hessenberg decomposition (HD), and singular value decomposition (SVD). First, in the embedding process, the host image is decomposed into a number of sub-bands through multilevel DWT, and the resulting coefficients of which are then used as the input for HD. The watermark is operated on the SVD at the same time. The watermark is finally embedded into the host image by the scaling factor. Fruit fly optimization algorithm, one of the natural-inspired optimization algorithms is devoted to find the scaling factor through the proposed objective evaluation function. The proposed method is compared to other research works under various spoof attacks, such as the filter, noise, JPEG compression, JPEG2000 compression, and sharpening attacks. The experimental results show that the proposed image watermarking method has a good trade-off between robustness and invisibility even for the watermarks with multiple sizes.INDEX TERMS Image watermarking, discrete wave transformation, singular value decomposition, Hessenberg decomposition, fruit fly optimization algorithm.

A Novel Optimized Semi-Blind Scheme for Color Image Watermarking

“…Compared with grayscale and binary image schemes, color images have two main advantages: a large amount of data can be hidden; the information capacity of color images is twenty-four (24) times greater than that of binary images [11]. Recently, researchers mostly concentrate on the digital watermarking scheme for grayscale images [24], [48], or binary images [54]. However, there are only a few efficient digital watermarking schemes for color images [2], [11], [21], [32].…”

“…However, there are only a few efficient digital watermarking schemes for color images [2], [11], [21], [32]. In the literature, the majority of watermarking schemes are designed for binary or gray-level images [37], [48], [54]. In [24], the author proposed a hybrid image watermarking scheme based on DWT and SVD for protecting grayscale images.…”

“…To increase the overall performance of the watermarking schemes: visual quality and robustness are two key indicators, and the trade-off between them is always a challenging problem [48]. Moreover, if we want a watermarking scheme to be more robust, then watermarked image quality may be sacrificed.…”

“…Moreover, if we want a watermarking scheme to be more robust, then watermarked image quality may be sacrificed. In recent years, many bioinspired algorithms are used to solve the aforementioned problems of watermarking, such as firefly algorithm (FA) [54], differential evolution (DE) [26], [55], artificial bee colony (ABC) [6], [32], [51], fruit fly optimization algorithm (FOA) [48], teaching-learning-based optimization (TLB) [47], and particle swarm optimization (PSO) [27], [31], [56]- [60]. PSO is an adaptive population dependent optimization approach that focused on fish education or social behavior of birds gathering.…”

“…Therefore, researchers are also proposing watermark schemes within the frequency domain. The frequency-domain based algorithms has different applications, such as watermarking algorithms developed using frequency-domain operations like discrete wavelet transform (DWT) [1], [5], [13], [17], [24], [48], [50]. The frequency-domain of the cover data is originally broken down into different frequencies.…”