Cascade approach of DWT-SVD digital image watermarking

Ajit k. bhovi, Prashant R. Sangulagi

Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering, BEC, Bagalkot
ajitbhovi@yahoo.com, psangulgi@gmail.com

Abstract
Digital image watermarking is a method of embedding
information into the host image in order to make the
image secure against any possible attacks. Information
can be an image or a data whose size is less than the host
image, such that embedding should not alter the original
characteristics of host image to a large extent. The
embedded information is called watermark, it can be
extracted whenever required and the originality of the
image can be tested by using a set of performance
parameters. Watermarking method has wide range of
applications in the field of secured data transfer. In this
work, we have implemented digital watermarking
techniques, namely, DWT-SVD cascade technique where
we combined both SVD and DWT techniques.
Keyword: Host image, watermark, embedding, extracting
and performance parameters.

I. Introduction

This need attracted attention from the research

community and industry leading to a creation of a new
information hiding form, called Digital Watermarking.
Many research efforts over the past decade have enabled
digital watermarking to establish itself as a potential
solution for the protection of ownership rights and
policing information piracy of multimedia elements like
images, audio and video. A digital watermark is an
invisible signature embedded inside multimedia content to
show authenticity and ownership. It contains useful
certifiable information for the owner of the host media,
such as producer's name, company logo, etc; the
watermark can be detected or extracted later to make an
assertion about the host media.
An image watermarking scheme should at least meet the
following requirements: transparency and robustness.
Transparency means that the embedded watermark should
be perceptual invisible and robustness means that the
embedded watermark shouldnt be erased by any attack
that maintains the host image quality acceptable. Trade
off between transparency and robustness is one of the
most important issues in image watermarking.

A recent proliferation and success of the Internet, together

with availability of relatively inexpensive digital
recording and storage devices has created an environment
in which it became very easy to obtain, replicate and
distribute digital content without any loss in quality. This
has become a great concern to the multimedia content
(music, video, and image) publishing industries, because
technologies or techniques that could be used to protect
intellectual property rights for digital media, and prevent
unauthorized copying did not exist.

This article summarizes the both DWT and SVD

techniques and their cascade approach. The remainder of
the paper is organized as follows. Section II introduces
brief about both techniques DWT and SVD. Section III
presents an algorithm of cascade approach of DWT-SVD.
Section IV presents experimental results. Sections V give
conclusion and future work.

While encryption technologies can be used to prevent

unauthorized access to digital content, it is clear that
encryption has its limitations in protecting intellectual
property rights: once a content is decrypted, theres
nothing to prevent an authorized user from illegally
replicating digital content. Some other technology was
obviously needed to help establish and prove ownership
rights, track content usage, ensure authorized access,
facilitate content authentication and prevent illegal
replication.

The techniques [1] [6] which are present in digital image

watermarking are

II. Techniques of digital image watermarking

Singular Value Decomposition (SVD)

Discrete wavelet transform (DWT)
Discrete cosine transform (DCT)

In these techniques we are interested in DWT and SVD

where we are combining both. In next sub section we give
brief introduction to both techniques.

2D DWT Applied to an Image

An image can be represented in the form of a matrix,
when a DWT of that matrix is taken it transforms that
image into the bands of the frequencies called very low
frequency(A),
high
frequency(D)
and
middle
frequency(H,V) for the first level. DWT is applied on the
higher levels on the band (A) to generate frequency
bands.

Where A is m*n matrix, U is m*m matrix, S is m*n

matrix & V is n*n matrix
Where UU = I; VV = I; the columns of U are
orthonormal eigenvectors of AA , the columns of V are
orthonormal eigenvectors of AA, and S is a diagonal
matrix containing the square roots of eigen values from U
or V in descending order.

Figure 1 explains the 3level DWT applied on image

III. DWT-SVD Based Watermarking Method
An alternative to the DWT-DCT and SVD method is
implemented called DWT-SVD which gives satisfactory
results for the attacks and the payload capacity as
discussed in [2] [5]
3.1 Watermark Embedding Algorithm
1. 4 level DWT is applied on the host image which
generates 12 bands of frequencies.
2. SVD based embedding is applied for the V and
H bands of the 4th level of the image as explained
in the section 4.3 using suitable gain factor.
3. SVD embedded V and H bands are used to
reconstruct back the watermarked image by
IDWT.
Fig 1 level DWT applied to an image
Flow Chart
Figure 2 illustrates the example of the DWT applied on
the image Ganapati.

Fig. 2 DWT2 applied to an image GANAPATI

Singular Value Decomposition Based Watermarking
Method
SVD is based on a theorem from linear algebra which
says that a rectangular matrix A can be broken down into
the product of three matrices - an orthogonal matrix U, a
diagonal matrix S, and the transpose of an orthogonal
matrix V . The theorem is usually presented something
like this:
A = USV

3.2 Watermark Extraction Algorithm

1.
2.

3.

4 level DWT is applied on the host image which

generates 12 bands of frequencies.
SVD based extraction is applied for the V and H
bands of the 4th level of the image as explained
in the section 4.4 using suitable gain factor.
SVD embedded V and H bands are used to
reconstruct back the watermarked image by
IDWT.

Table 1 shows the correlation coefficient and the PSNR

values with their respective gains

IV Experimental Results
The host image we used is lena which is shown in fig. 3,
because it has all the characteristics of the image. The
watermark image is as shown in fig. 4.

Gain

PSNR

Correlation Coefficient

(dB)

Fig.3 Lena image size 512x512

353.4

0.1

105.88

0.4

88.31

0.9984

1.0

76.46

0.985

2.0

68.78

0.9271

64.616

0.8499

61.76

0.7741

59.595

0.708

Table 1 Values of PSNR and Correlation coefficient for

different values of gain
Fig.4 Watermark wm
Cascade DWT-SVD Based Method
In a cascade DWT-SVD method the watermark can be
extracted. Fig 5 shows the watermarked image with the
gain factor 0.85, and fig 6 shows the extracted watermark
for gain = 0.4.

The graph below shows the PSNR versus gain and

correlation coefficient versus gain in fig 7 and fig 8
respectively for the watermarked lena with respect to the
original image.

Fig 7 gain v/s PSNR

Fig 5 watermarked

Fig 6
Fig 8 gain v/s correlation

In DWT-SVD based approach watermark is embedded

only in the 4th level V and H sub bands. Correlation
coefficient of 0.8 is for the value of gain factor 3.7.This
infers that the watermarking approach has good payload
capacity. Image perceptibility is also satisfactory as on
watermarking the original image doesnt loose its
originality for high value of gain. The pixel are readily
varied the gain value exceeds 1.5 above 2. The original
image looses its perceptibility

of 0.998 and PSNR of 91.26dB and on increasing the

values of LEN and THETA above 10 and 15 respectively
.The watermarked image looses its original perceptibility
and the extracted watermark has only the correlation of
0.57 Hence the watermarking method is robust to the
wide range of blurring parameters.

Attacks on Watermarked Images

The Lena watermarked image with the gain factor of 1 is
used to experiment the extraction of watermark for
different types of the attacks
1. Gaussian Noise
The different values of mean and variance are used and
the watermark is extracted .fig 9 shows the watermarked
image attacked by the Gaussian noise and its respective
extracted watermark is shown in fig 10.

Fig. 11 blurring noise added LEN=10 THETA=12

Fig. 12 extracted watermark

3. Rotational Noise

Fig 9 mean=0.2, variance=0.3

The watermark is extracted for the various values of

rotational angels. Figure 13 shows some of the
watermarked images and the respective extracted
watermarks with the correlation coefficient and PSNR
with respect to the original image in fig 14.

Fig 10 Extracted watermark

The watermark is extracted for the value of mean and
variance below 0.3 and variance below 0.5. Hence the
watermarking approach is robust to addition of Gaussian
noise.
Fig. 13 rotated to 10 degrees
2. Blurring Noise
Blurring noise is applied on the watermarked image for
the variable values of the LEN and THETA the following
fig 11 shows the Blurring noise added image and the fig
12 shows extracted image
For many values of THETA when length is kept constant
to one the extracted watermark has a constant correlation

Fig. 14 extracted watermark

As shown in the above figures the watermark can be

extracted for the degrees of rotation and the correlation
with the original watermark is satisfactory. The extracted
watermark gives has highest correlation for 0,180,360
degrees of rotation and almost reduces for 270, 120, 90
degrees with the correlation coefficient around 0.445.

fields such as Fingerprinting, data hiding, copyright

protection, Copyright, Data Authentication, Medical
Safety etc.
Future Work
1.

4. Resize Noise
Resized watermarked image is resized to the original
image size so that watermark can be extracted. The
watermarked image was resized to the various
percentages as illustrated in the below figures.

2.

3.

The image watermarking of colored images can

be developed by separating red green and blue
primary colors independently and reconstructing
back to get the watermarked color image.
The watermarking was proposed for the gray
scale images which can be further implemented
for different multimedia data such as video and
audio. This is in the immediate demand in the
market for security and copyright applications.
Advanced and faster watermarking methods for
live audio and video streams can be implemented
where the speed of processing the immediate
data is an issue.

REFERENCES
Fig. 15 resized to 25%

Fig. 16 extracted watermark

DWT-SVD based watermarking is robust to the resizing
for various values of resizing the extracted watermark can
be easily correlated with the correlation coefficient not
below 0.98 one example is shown in fig 15 and its
extracted watermark in fig 16 because the noise hardly
affects the V band where watermark is added.
V CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORK
Conclusion
SVD method requires both the watermark and the host
image or the original image to extract the watermark. This
may not be possible in practical applications. DWT-DCT
method requires only host image to detect the watermark
from the watermarked image and watermark to separate
the original image from watermarked image, this provides
authentication, Digital signature, Security which may be
applicable in various fields where the latter factors are
necessary. The SVD and DWT-DCT watermarking
methods did assure satisfactory results for robustness to
the wide ranges of attacks and also the payload capacity
so the effort is made to improve the robustness by
employing DWT-SVD cascade of spatial and transform
domain, which assured confidential results comparative of
other discussed watermarking methods. The above
discussed watermarking method can be employed in the

[1]
Sin-Joo
Lee;
Sung-Hwan
Jung
A survey of watermarking techniques applied
to
multimedia Industrial Electronics, 2001. Proceedings,
ISIE 2001. IEEE International Symposium on 2001,
Page(s): 272 - 277 vol.1
[2] Saeed K. Amirgholipour, Ahmad R. Naghsh-Nilchi
Robust Digital Image Watermarking Based on Joint
DWT-DCT International Journal of Digital Content
Technology and its Applications Volume 3, Number 2,
June 2009
[3] Navneet Kumar Mandhani Watermarking Using
Decimal Sequences: A thesis.
[4] Vallabha VH Multiresolution Watermark Based on
Wavelet Transform for Digital images
[5] R. A. Ghazy , N. A. El-Fishawy, M. M. Hadhoud, M.
I. Dessouky and F. E. Abd El-Samie An Efficient BlockBy-Block SVD-Based Image Watermarking Scheme
Ubiquitous Computing and Communication Journal.
[6] Er-Hsien Fu Literature Survey on Digital Image
EE381K-Multidimensional
Signal
Watermarking
Processing 8/19/98
[7] Yuval Cassuto, Michael Lustig and Shay Mizrachy
Real-Time Digital Watermarking for Audio Signals
Using Perceptual Masking
[8] Santi P. Maity, Malay K Kundu and Tirtha S. Das,
Robust SS watermarking with improved capacity,
Pattern Recognition Letters, Volume 28, Issue 3, February
2007, pp 350-356.
[9]http://www.aquaphoenix.com/lecture/matlab10/index.h
tml