Image and Vision Computing 24 (2006) 111119 www.elsevier.

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Enhanced images watermarking based on amplitude modulation

T. Amornraksa *, K. Janthawongwilai
Department of Computer Engineering, King Mongkuts University of Technology Thonburi, 91 Pracha-Utit, Toongkru, Bangkok 10140, Thailand Received 30 November 2004; received in revised form 20 September 2005; accepted 24 September 2005

Abstract This paper presents an image watermarking method with blind detection based on amplitude modulation. Basically, the watermark embedding is performed by modifying the pixel values in the blue channel of an image, while the watermark retrieval is achieved by using a prediction technique based on a linear combination of nearby pixel values around the embedded pixels. Based on the analysis results, three different methods are proposed to enhance the watermark retrieval performance, i.e. by balancing watermark bits around the embedding pixels, by properly tuning the strength of embedding watermark, by modifying the method of pixel prediction. Experimental results show that the watermarking scheme implementing our methods achieves signicant improvements over the existing schemes. Remarkable improvements are still obtained even if various types of attacks are applied. q 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Digital image processing; Copyright protection; Digital watermarking; Amplitude Modulation

1. Introduction Digital watermarking is a method used to provide an electronic proof of ownership and/or receipt in distributed copies of digital media, e.g. images that are publicly distributed through the Internet. Conceptually, secret information called watermark is imperceptibly embedded into host media in such a way that it is robust against both unintentional and intentional attacks, and can still be effectively retrieved afterwards. Furthermore, watermarked media should be perceptually similar to host media, so that most watermarking method is working locally, i.e. in a neighbouring region of watermarked area. In addition, an efcient watermarking method should provide a blind detection property, so that watermark recovery can be achieved without the need of original media. The digital watermarking is vital since it helps discourage people from making and distributing an unauthorized copy of digital media. Presently, there has been quite a number of watermarking methods proposed and proved to be efcient. Several of them perform the watermark embedding by changing the coefcients in a transformed domain of host media. For example, Wang et al. [1] and Suhail et al. [2] proposed the methods of watermark embedding by modifying the discrete wavelet
* Correspondence author. Tel.: C66 0 2470 9083; fax: C66 0 2872 5050. E-mail address: thumrongrat.amo@kmutt.ac.th (T. Amornraksa).

0262-8856/$ - see front matter q 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.imavis.2005.09.018

transform (DWT) coefcients, and the discrete cosine transform (DCT) coefcients, respectively. However many researches demonstrated that such approach was not robust enough against geometrical attack, e.g. cropping. Although watermark embedding in spatial domain which was formerly developed may survive geometrical attack, the watermark inside can easily be distorted by most compression schemes, e.g. JPEG standard [3]. In 1998, an efcient image watermarking method based on amplitude modulation was rst proposed by Kutter et al. [4]. Their method was empirically proved to be robust against various types of attacks including geometrical ones. Accordingly, the watermark embedding was performed by modifying the pixel values in the blue channel of a colour image. The watermark retrieval was achieved, without the need of original image, by using a prediction technique based on a linear combination of pixel values in a cross-shape neighbourhood around the embedded pixels. The method was further developed to improve its retrieval performance by introducing a Gaussian pixel weighing mask in the embedding process, and employing a linear combination of all nearby pixel values around the embedded pixels in the retrieval process [5]. Nevertheless, we found that if the number of watermark bits, 1 and -1, around the embedding pixels is not balanced, the probability to retrieve the watermark correctly will be decreased. This circumstance can frequently happen when we embed a watermark that contains recognizable patterns, e.g. a company logo. Moreover, the above probability will also be decreased if the host media to be watermarked are high detail

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images, e.g. an image with high difference in values between nearby pixels. In this paper, thus, we analyze all possible factors that inuence the retrieval performance of the image watermarking method based on amplitude modulation. Then, based on the analysis results, we propose three different improving methods to enhance its performance, that is, by balancing the watermark bits around the embedding pixels in the watermark preparing process, by properly tuning the strength of watermark in the embedding process, and by modifying the linear combination of nearby pixel values around the embedded pixels in the retrieval process. After implementing the proposed methods in the watermarking scheme, we evaluate and compare the improved performance of our scheme with the previous schemes in [4] and [5]. This paper is organized as follows. Section 2 presents concepts and performance analysis of the watermarking method based on amplitude modulation. Section 3 describes three different methods developed to improve the watermark retrieval performance. Experimental results are shown and discussed in Section 4, and nally we conclude our nding in Section 5. 2. Amplitude modulation based watermarking Basically, a unique binary bit-stream is generated and considered as a watermark w(i,j)2{1,-1} to be embedded into a colour image. The watermark embedding is performed by modifying the blue component at a given coordinate (i,j), in a predened pattern, e.g. line scan fashion (left to right, top to bottom). Note that, in a colour image, each pixel usually consists of three 8-bit samples, where each sample represents colour information for three different components; red (R), green (G) and blue (B). In the embedding process, the blue component is selected to be watermarked because, according to the RGB colour model, it is the one that human eye is least sensitive to [6]. The modications of the blue component in each pixel B(i,j) are either additive or subtractive, depending on w(i,j), and proportional to the luminance of the embedding pixel L(i,j)Z0.299R(i,j) C0.587G(i,j) C0.114B(i,j). Due to the fact that changes in high luminance pixels are less perceptible to the human eye, the luminance value is hence considered and used for tuning the strength of watermark, so that more energy of watermark can be added to achieve a higher level of robustness. The watermarked pixel B i;j is expressed as follows: B i;j Z Bi;j C wi;j sLi;j (1)

Fig. 1. Block diagram of the watermark embedding process based on amplitude modulation.

At the receiver site, the embedded watermark can be retrieved based on two assumptions. First, any pixel value within an image is close to its surrounding neighbours, so that a pixel value at a given coordinate (i,j) can be estimated by the average of its nearby pixel values. Second, the summation of w around (i,j) is close to zero, so that the embedded bit at (i,j) can be estimated by the following equation
w i;j Z Bi;j KBi;j

(2)

where B i;j is considered as a prediction of B(i,j), and determined from the nearby pixel values around (i,j) as follows: ! 1 1 X 1 X Bi;j Z B KBi;j (3) 8 mZK1 nZK1 iCm;jCn Since w(i,j) can be either 1 and -1, the value of w i;j Z 0 is set as a threshold, and its sign is used to estimate the value of w(i,j). If w i;j is positive (or negative), w(i,j) is 1 (or -1, respectively). Notice that the magnitude of w i;j reects a condent level of estimating w(i,j). The larger the value of w i;j , the more certain the accuracy of w(i,j) will be. To analyse factors that affect the estimation of w, Eq. (2) is rewritten by ! 1 1 X X 1 w B K B i ; j i;j ZBi;j C wi;j sLi;j K 8 mZK1 nZK1 iCm;jCn ! 1 1 X 1 X K w sL Kwi;j sLi;j 8 mZK1 nZK1 iCm;jCn iCm;jCn (4) The rst and second terms in the right-hand side of Eq. (4) represent the original pixel value and the watermark energy at (i,j), while the third and fourth terms represent the prediction of B(i,j) and the summation of watermark energy around (i,j), respectively. We can see that the watermark energy at (i,j) can be recovered back if the rst term equals the third term, and the fourth term equals zero. According to the assumptions previously made, if the rst assumption holds, the difference between the rst and the third terms should approach zero, and if the second assumption holds, the fourth term should approach zero. The estimation of w(i,j) will now depend on the second term, which is proportional to s and L(i,j). In the presence of noise, the magnitude of the second term must be higher that of introduced noises and/or attacks, in order to estimate w(i,j) correctly. Based on the above analysis, three different methods are developed and used to reduce the effects from the rst, third and forth terms in Eq. (4).

where s is a scaling factor used to tune the strength of watermark for the whole image frame. Practically, s must be carefully selected to obtain the best trade-off between imperceptibility and robustness. Prior to tuning the watermark strength, applying a key-based permutation technique to the watermark was suggested in order to enhance the security of the entire system. Block diagram of the watermark embedding process is illustrated in Fig. 1.

T. Amornraksa, K. Janthawongwilai / Image and Vision Computing 24 (2006) 111119 Table 1 Summation of w at all possible w around (i,j) No. of wZ1 and wZ-1 around (i,j) Summation of w 8 and 0 1 7 and 1 0.75 6 and 2 0.5 5 and 3 0.25 4 and 4 0 3 and 5 -0.25 2 and 6 -0.5 1 and 7 -0.75 0 and 8 -1

113

3. Proposed methods First, let us consider only the second and forth terms in Eq. (4). By assuming that all luminance values around (i,j) are identical, the effect from the forth term is eliminated when the numbers of wZ1 and wZ-1 around (i,j) are equal, which will make the fourth term disappeared and leave the second term alone. In fact, this condition is hardly met in a practical system, especially when a textual black & white image is used as a watermark. With different values of w around (i,j), various resultant forth terms can be determined by calculating the value of the summation term w at all possible combinations of wZ1 and wZ-1 around (i,j), as shown in Table 1. For simplicity, the results obtained is normalised by dividing it by its maximum value, and can be expressed as follows: ! 1 1 X 1 X Summation of w Z w Kwi;j ; 8 mZK1 nZK1 iCm;jCn (5) where LiCm;jCn Z Li;j Notice that the worst result occurs when all w around (i,j) are identical and equal to 1. As mentioned earlier, when a watermark containing recognizable patterns is embedded, such as a company logo or some texts in black & white image, the worst result can be frequently encountered. Clearly, the permutation process does not help much, since the numbers of wZ1 and wZ-1 within the embedding watermark are still the same. To improve the balance of w, a simple and fast improving method is instead applied to all w around (i,j) by XORing them with another pseudo-random bit-stream, generated from a keybased stream cipher. This approach is based on an assumption that equal number of 1s and -1s are generated and XORed with w around (i,j). Hence, after XORing, the numbers of wZ1 and wZ-1 should be approximately equal, and the fourth term should then be vanished. Although, in practice, the numbers of 1s and -1s generated from a stream cipher may be slightly different [7], which results in the existence of the forth term, the summation of new w around (i,j) should be close to zero and gives merely a small effect to the second term. Also, at the receiver site, the retrieved bits must be XORed with the same pseudo-random bit-stream to obtain the correct w. It is obvious that using a pseudo-random bit-stream in the process can provide an extra security level to the embedded watermark, compared to ordinary permutation techniques; however, how to safely transfer between two different watermarks is another issue. This is equivalent to a pre-processing that converts the original watermark into another watermark before embedding it into the image. To reduce the effect of luminance part in the second and forth terms, all luminance values around (i,j) must be

equalised. We thus introduce a new parameter L i;j , in which its value is close to its nearby luminance values, and use it as a replacement of L(i,j). Practically, a method based on spatial low-pass ltering can be used to obtain L i;j having the property previously described [8]. This approach was rst introduced in [5], where a lter called Gaussian pixel weighting mask or Gaussian mask was used to equalise the luminance values around (i,j), and at the same time, give more weight gradually to the centre of the ltering area. With its advantages, it is still used as a method to obtain L i;j in our watermarking scheme. Note that the result obtained is equivalent to a pre-processing of the image with a low-pass lter, and thus all luminance values around (i,j) will be modied to reach its local averaged value. Fundamentally, in a Gaussian mask lter, coefcients within ltering area, g(x,y), can be described by a Gaussian distribution, and determined by the following equation. g x; y Z 1 Kx2Cy2 =2s2 e 2ps2 (6)

For instance, the coefcient at the centre of ltering area, g(0,0), is obtained by substituting both x and y in Eq. (6) with zero. For a 3!3 pixels Gaussian mask, the values of x and y vary from -1 to 1, and the resulting coefcients are given by 3 2 2 2 2 0:5eK1=s 0:5eK0:5=s 0:5eK1=s 7 6 ps 2 ps2 ps2 7 6 7 6 2 2 7 6 6 0:5eK0:5=s 0 :5 0:5eK0:5=s 7 7 6 (7) 7 6 ps 2 ps2 ps2 7 6 7 6 6 0:5eK1=s2 0:5eK0:5=s2 0:5eK1=s2 7 5 4 ps 2 ps2 ps2 Generally, L i;j obtained from the linear spatial ltering of an image with the above Gaussian mask is given by L i;j Z
1 1 X X mZ K 1 nZ K 1

gm;n LiCm;jCn

(8)

Fig. 2 shows the coefcient values of the 3!3 pixels Gaussian mask at particular values of s2. As can be seen from the gure, a higher value of s2 gives more weight to the edge of
0.019 0.100 0.019 0.100 0.531 0.100 0.019 0.100 0.019 0.050 0.115 0.050 0.115 0.265 0.115 0.050 0.115 0.050 0.059 0.097 0.059 0.097 0.159 0.097 0.059 0.097 0.059

(a)

(b)

(c)

Fig. 2. Coefcient values of the 3!3 pixels Gaussian mask with (a) s2Z0.3, (b) s2Z0.6 and (c) s2Z1.0.

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Fig. 3. Block diagram of the proposed watermark embedding process.

the ltering area. It also gives a smaller summation term of all 1 1 P P coefcient values within the ltering area, i.e. gm;n Z 1:007; 0:925 and 0:783 at s2Z0.3, 0.6 and 1.0, respectively. 2 This implies a reduction of L i;j at a higher value of s . In a 2 practical system, a proper value of s must be carefully selected, otherwise too low value of L i;j will decrease the robustness of embedded watermark. Note that the scaling factor s is left untouched since its change affects every pixel in the watermarked images. Next, by considering the rst and third terms in Eq. (4), their effects will be removed if the prediction of B(i,j) matches the original B(i,j). Theoretically, the value of B i;j should be closer to B(i,j) than its neighbours, we therefore include it in the calculation steps to obtain a better prediction of B(i,j). However, to avoid bias from additional w embedded in B i;j , one neighbouring pixel around (i,j) that most differs from B i;j must be removed from the calculation. In other words, instead of computing B i;j from 8 nearby pixel values around (i,j), we now determine B i;j from 7 out of 8 nearby pixel values around (i,j) and the watermarked pixel value itself. We refer this method as pixel value replacing. Note that it gives impacts to both third and fourth terms, that is, in the third term, a new prediction of B(i,j) should approach B(i,j), while in the forth term, the pixel value replacing should directly affect the balance of w around (i j). In practice, the result obtained can be varied, depending mainly on characteristics of watermarking image. The pseudo code to implement the pixel value replacing procedure is shown below. diff_maxZ0 m_maxZ0 n_maxZ0 DO mZK1, 1 DO nZK1, 1 IF (j B[m,n] - B[i,j] j O diff_max) diff_maxZj B[m,n] - B[i,j] j m_maxZm n_maxZn END IF
Table 2 Differences between three watermarking schemes Scheme Kutters Puertpans Proposed Watermark Preparing Without XORing operation Without XORing operation With XORing operation Watermark Embedding
mZ K 1 nZ K 1

B[m_max, n_max]ZB[i,j] END DO END DO It can be seen that, in case of having two extreme pixel values or more in the neighbourhood, the rst detected one will be removed from the calculation. In the proposed watermarking scheme, all proposed methods are simultaneously implemented to achieve the maximum improvement. Block diagram of the proposed watermark embedding process is illustrated in Fig. 3, and a new watermarked pixel and a new prediction of B(i,j) can now be expressed as
new B i;j Z Bi;j C wi;j sLi;j

(9) !

B i;j

1 Z 8

1 1 X X mZ K 1 nZ K 1

B iCm;jCn KBm_max;n_max

(10)

The differences between our scheme and the previous schemes in [4] and [5] are given in Table 2. 4. Results and discussions The rst part in this section explored the impacts caused by each proposed method, while the second part explored the improvements gained from our watermarking scheme. In all experiments, four 256!256 pixels colour images having various characteristics, Lena, Bird, Fish and Tower, were used as original testing images. A 256!256 pixels black & white image containing a logo CPE 2004 was used as a watermark, i.e. by considering the black (or white) colour pixel as -1 (or 1, respectively) (Fig. 4). 4.1. Impacts of the proposed methods To evaluate the performance of the rst proposed method, we computed the summation terms of w around (i,j) for all possible embedding positions, before and after the XORing process, and categorised them according to their resultant values. As shown in Table 3, before XORing, the resultant values increased exponentially from -1 to 1, and most summation terms, 66% or more, gave 1 as a result. This is because the ratio between the white colour pixels over the black ones was very high (approximately 11:1), so that most values of w around (i,j) were 1. Nonetheless, after XORing, most resultant values moved gradually towards the summation term of 0. Table 3 also indicates that the proposed method was

Watermark Retrieval Use cross-shape neighbourhood (4 pixels) Use surrounding neighbourhood (8 pixels) Use surrounding neighbourhood with its centre (8 pixels)

Use luminance value from the embedding pixel only Use luminance value weighted from the embedding pixel and its nearby pixels Use luminance value weighted from the embedding pixel and its nearby pixels

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Fig. 4. (a) Lena, (b) Bird, (c) Fish, (d) Tower, (e) CPE 2004 and (f) a pattern of pseudo-random bit-stream.

more suitable for the scheme based on surrounding neighbourhood, since the amount of summation terms that was close to 0, on average, was higher. In the second proposed method, the strength of watermark was tuned by a new parameter L i;j , determined from the 3!3 Gaussian mask. To demonstrate that L i;j was getting closer to its neighbours, we measured the variance of L within an area of 3!3 pixels. A sliding window technique was used to collect every variance of L for all possible ltering area within a testing image. Some results from the image Bird at particular s2 of the Gaussian mask are shown in Fig. 5. Notice that the horizontal axis represents the pixel centred at each 3!3 sliding window, in a successive order, from left to right and top to bottom. From Fig. 5, the higher the value of s2, the smaller the value of L within a 3!3 pixels area will be. Also, the Gaussian mask helps equalise the luminance parts in the ltering area. To observe the overview of variance reduction at various s2 of the Gaussian mask, we further measured the average value of all variances of L from four testing images. As shown in Fig. 6, the increase of s2 results in the decrease of variances of L in logarithmic scale. In the third proposed method, a neighbouring pixel around (i,j) that most differed from B i;j was replaced by itself. Since the method affected both third and fourth B i;j terms in Eq. (4), its impacts were separately examined. For the third term, we measured root mean square error (RMSE) between the predicted and original B(i,j) for every embedding position to observe the difference between the existing and new pixel prediction methods. The results of RMSE from each testing image, before and after the pixel

value replacing process, were compared and presented in Table 4. Note that a smaller value of RMSE indicates a better prediction of B(i,j). For the forth term, we computed the summation terms of w around (i,j) for all possible embedding positions, before and after the pixel value replacing process, again. The results obtained from four testing images were categorised, according to their resultant values, and presented in percentage unit in Table 5. From results, after applying the pixel value replacing, the accuracy of the prediction of B(i,j) from both schemes was improved, while the distribution of the summation terms of w around (i,j) was spread out from its centre. Although Table 4 indicates that the performance of the scheme based on crossshape neighbourhood was superior, due to its smaller average RMSE, Table 5 illustrates that another scheme based on

Table 3 Summation of w around (i,j) before and after the XORing process Summation of w 1 0.75 0.5 0.25 0 -0.25 -0.5 -0.75 -1 Total Kutters (%) Kutters with XORing (%) 6.39 0.00 25.11 0.00 37.35 0.00 25.04 0.00 6.12 100.00 Puertpans (%) 66.70 13.08 11.00 6.24 2.28 0.62 0.08 0.01 0.00 100.00 Puertpans with XORing (%) 0.39 3.23 11.09 21.90 27.38 21.69 10.90 3.03 0.38 100.00

76.21 0.00 15.90 0.00 6.43 0.00 1.36 0.00 0.11 100.00

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Fig. 5. (a) no ltering, (b) ltered by the Gaussian mask with s2Z0.3, (c) s2Z0.6 and (d) s2Z1.0.

surrounding neighbourhood performed much better. This is because its amount of summation terms that was close to 0 was much higher, on average. For instance, at the worst case where the summation of w equals 1, the amount of summation terms obtained from the scheme based on cross-shape neighbourhood was approximately ten times higher. Hence, more benets will be obtained if we implement the pixel value replacing method with the scheme based on surrounding neighbourhood. 4.2. Improved Performance of the Watermarking Scheme In the experiments, peak signal to noise ratio (PSNR) was used as a quality indicator for watermarked image, while normalized correlation (NC) was used as an accuracy indicator for retrieved watermark. The NC was also used for robustness evaluation of embedded watermark. Technically, the NC is a similarity measurement between two different signals, which is given by

P P i j wi;j wi;j q NC Z q P P 2 P P 2 i j wi;j i j wi;j

(11)

where w(i,j) and w i;j are the original and retrieved watermarks, respectively. Normally, the value of NC varies between 0 and 1, where the value of 1 implies that two compared watermarks are identical.
Table 4 Comparison of RMSEs before and after the pixel value replacing process Scheme Kutters Kutters with pixel value replacing Puertpans Puertpans with pixel value replacing RMSE Lena 5.71 5.24 6.92 6.22 Bird 16.50 13.76 18.70 16.64 Fish 37.82 32.99 42.65 38.73 Tower 7.58 7.06 9.82 8.84 Average 16.90 14.76 19.52 17.61

Table 5 Summation of w around (i,j) before and after the pixel value replacing process
Average Variance of Luminances
1000 800 600 400 200 0 0 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5

Summation of w 1 0.75 0.5 0.25 0 -0.25 -0.5 -0.75 -1 Total

Kutters (%) 6.27 0.00 25.04 0.00 37.39 0.00 25.02 0.00 6.28 100

Kutters with pixel value replacing (%) 12.45 0.00 22.08 0.00 27.65 0.00 23.78 0.00 14.04 100

Puertpans (%) 0.38 3.09 10.87 21.87 27.47 21.88 10.94 3.12 0.38 100

Puertpans with pixel value replacing (%) 1.27 4.76 11.53 19.12 23.05 20.38 12.93 5.47 1.49 100

0.6

0.7

0.8

0.9

Fig. 6. Average variances of L 0 at various s2.

T. Amornraksa, K. Janthawongwilai / Image and Vision Computing 24 (2006) 111119 Table 6 Average PSNRs at various s s Average PSNR (dB) 0.02 40.10 0.06 30.92 0.1 26.58 0.2 20.74 0.3 17.36 0.4 15.01 0.5 13.25

117

Kutter's 1 0.9 0.8 0.7 0.6 0.02 0.06 0.1

Puertpan's

Proposed

0.2 s

0.3

0.4

0.5

Fig. 7. Comparison of average NCs at various s.

To obtain a fair comparison between three watermarking schemes, the embedding parameters used in each scheme were adjusted until the quality of watermarked images reached the same PSNR (G0.005 dB), and the watermark retrieval was performed afterwards. We rst evaluated and compared the retrieval performance at various s. To obtain an equivalent quality of the watermarked image Fish, for example, given sZ0.2 in all watermarking schemes, the values of s2 in the Puertpans and proposed schemes must be set to 0.2504 and 0.2846, respectively. Table 6 shows the average PSNRs obtained from four testing images, while Fig. 7 illustrates the average NCs of the watermarks retrieved from those images. As expected, the results in Table 6 indicate the trade off between the imperceptibility of the watermarked images and the robustness of the retrieved watermark, as can be obtained from ordinary watermarking methods. The improved performance of the proposed scheme is seen from Fig. 7, where its retrieval performance was improved by 21.8 and 16%, on average, compared to the schemes in [4] and [5], respectively. We then evaluated and compared the retrieval performance of three watermarking schemes again at various s2 of the Gaussian mask. This time, to obtain an equivalent quality to the watermarked image Tower, for another example, given s2Z 0.6 in the Puertpans and proposed schemes, the values of s in the Kutters, Puertpans and proposed schemes must be set to 0.1832, 0.1993 and 0.2, respectively. As illustrated in Table 7 and Fig. 8, when we increased s2, the average PSNRs were constantly increased, whereas the
Table 7 Average PSNRs at various s2 s2 Average PSNR (dB) 0.1 16.25 0.2 19.85 0.3 20.51 0.4 20.75

average NCs were slightly dropped. The retrieval performance of the proposed scheme also was increased by 18.6 and 12.5%, on average, compared to the schemes in [4] and [5], respectively. From the above results, we can obviously see the advantages of tuning the value of s2, instead of s, in the watermarking scheme. In practice, similar to s, s2 should be properly selected to obtain the best trade-off between imperceptibility and robustness. Next, we evaluated and compared the robustness of embedded watermark. In the experiments, we applied various types of attack at different strengths to the watermarked images, i.e. high-pass ltering, JPEG compression, Gaussian distributed noise addition, and brightness & contrast enhancement, and computed the NC from the retrieved watermarks. It should be noticed that the effect of JPEG compression to the embedded watermark is similar to that of low-pass ltering. Hence, a watermark energy that remains within the low frequency region can only be recovered in the watermark retrieval process. As demonstrated in Figs. 912, the retrieval performance in term of average NC of our scheme was signicantly superior to the other twos. Robustness evaluation was also performed against image cropping & rotating and watermark counterfeit. In contrast to lter based attacks, with cropping & rotating, a watermark energy that remains within the un-cropped and rotated-back area can only be retrieved. In this experiment, the amount of cropped area depends mainly on the angle of rotation, and can be determined after rotating the image. Given sZ0.2 and s2Z0.3004, after the watermarked images Lena from three different schemes were attacked by 20% cropping and 458 rotating, we computed their NC and compared the results with other 997 pseudo-randomly generated watermarks, as illustrated in Fig. 13. Note that the capital letters A, B and C indicate the NCs obtained from the Kutters, Puertpans and the proposed schemes, respectively. The retrieved watermark from each scheme was nally translated back into a black & white image. Examples of the attacked image and the reconstructed watermarks are shown in Fig. 14. According to the results, if the NC obtained from a retrieved watermark was around 0.67 or lower, that watermark could be presumed as a fake one. This value can be used to indicate the absence of embedded watermark as well, since the NC of a watermark after XORing was equivalent to that of pseudo-random bit-stream. In the design of a practical watermarking scheme, various techniques may be incorporated to improve accuracy and robustness of the watermark, e.g. by employing an error control coding [9] or multiple embedding techniques [4]. Those techniques can be incorporated to further enhance the performance of our scheme as

Average NC

0.5 21.00

0.6 21.31

0.7 21.66

0.8 22.04

0.9 22.44

1.0 22.83

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Kutter's 0.9 0.85 0.8 0.75 0.7 3 6 9 12 Strength of Attack (%) 15 18 Puertpan's Proposed

Fig. 8. Comparison of average NCs at various s2.

Fig. 11. Comparison of average NCs after being attacked by Gaussian distributed noise addition.

Average NC

Kutter's

Puertpan's

Proposed 0.89 Average NC 0.81 0.73 0.65

Kutter's

Ruertpan's

Proposed

0.89 Average NC 0.81 0.73 0.65 0.8 0.7 0.6 0.5 Radius (Pixel x Pixel) 0.4 0.3

10

15 20 Strength of Attack (%)

25

30

Fig. 9. Comparison of average NCs after being attacked by high-pass ltering.

Fig. 12. Comparison of average NCs after being attacked by brightness & contrast enhancement.

well, provided that a higher complexity or a smaller amount of embeddable watermark in the new system is in an acceptable level.

5. Conclusion We have presented an enhanced version of image watermarking scheme based on amplitude modulation. We analysed all possible factors that could inuence the performance of watermarking scheme, and then proposed three different improving methods to enhance its retrieval

performance. In the watermark preparing process, the balance of watermark bits around the embedding pixels was improved by XORing them with a pseudo-random bitstream. In the watermark embedding process, the strength of embedding watermark was improved by using a Gaussian pixel weighting mask (lter), and in the watermark retrieval process, the prediction of original pixel was improved by including the watermarked pixel itself in the calculation steps. The experimental results showed signicant improvements obtained from our proposed watermarking scheme, compared to the previous ones in [4] and [5].

Kutter's 0.85 0.8 0.75 0.7 0.65 100 98

Puertpan's

Proposed

Average NC

96 94 92 Strength of Attack (%)

90

88

Fig. 10. Comparison of average NCs after being attacked by JPEG compression.

Fig. 13. Comparison of NCs from 1,000 watermarks (3 genuine and 997 random watermarks).

T. Amornraksa, K. Janthawongwilai / Image and Vision Computing 24 (2006) 111119

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Fig. 14. (a) watermarked image after being attacked by 20% image cropping and 458 image rotating (b) reconstructed watermarks CPE 2004 from (a) Kutters, (b) Puertpans and (c) Proposed schemes.

Acknowledgements The authors wish to thank Mr Pradit Trammanontikul for his valuable discussions. References
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[3] I.J. Cox, M.L. Miller, J.A. Bloom, Digital Watermarking, Morgan Kaufmann, Los Altos, CA, 2002. [4] M. Kutter, F. Jordan, F. Bossen, Digital signature of colour images using amplitude modulation, Journal of Electronic Imaging 7 (1998) 326332. [5] R. Puertpan, T. Amornraksa, Gaussian pixel weighting marks in amplitude modulation of colour image watermarking, in: Proceedings of the IEEE ISSPA, Kuala-Lampur, Malaysia, 2001. [6] J.F. Delaigle, C. Devleeschouwer, B. Macq, I. Langendijk, Human visual system features enabling watermarking, in: Proceedings of IEEE ICME, 2002, pp. 489492. [7] B. Schneier, Applied Cryptography, second ed., Wiley, New York, 1996. [8] R.C. Gonzalez, R.E. Woods, Digital Image Processing, second ed., Prentice-Hall, New Jersy, 2002. [9] P. Sweeney, Error Control Coding: An Introduction, Prentice-Hall, London, 1991.