A Robust Watermarking Scheme for Information

Hiding
K. Ramani #1, E. V. Prasad @2, S. Varadarajan *3, A. Subramanyam&4
#
CSED, SVN Engineering College, Tirupathi, India
1
ramanidileep@yahoo.com
@
Principal, JNTU College of Engineering, Kakinada, India
2
drevprasad@yahoo.com
*
EED, SVU College of Engineering, Tirupathi, India
3
varadasouri@gmail.com
&
CSED, AITS, Rajampet, AP, India
4
smarige@gmail.com

Abstract— Wavelet techniques can be successfully applied in
various signal and image processing applications, namely in
image de-noising, segmentation, classification, motion
estimation and copy right protection. The proliferation of
digitized media due to the rapid growth of networked
multimedia systems has created an urgent need for copyright
enforcement technologies that can protect copyright ownership
of multimedia objects. Digital image watermarking is one such
technology that has been developed to protect digital images
from illegal manipulations. In this paper, a robust and
imperceptible watermarking scheme for copy right protection is
proposed. The method is based on decomposing an image using
the Discrete Wavelet Transform, and then embedding locations
are generated from the low frequency sub-band by using secrete
sort to improve the embedding intensity. From the experimental
results, the proposed scheme provides not only good quality,
but also good robustness against external attacks, such as
rotation, compression, cropping, noise and scaling.
Keywords—Discrete Wavelet Transform, Watermarking,
Copyright Protection
I. INTRODUCTION
With rapid growth of multimedia technology, digital
watermarking for multimedia has become one of the widely
used copyright protection methods. Digital watermarking is
the process of conveying information by imperceptibly
embedding it into the digital media. The purpose of
embedding such information depends on the application and
the needs of owner/user of the digital media.
Main applications of watermarking include Copyright
Protection, Fingerprinting, Copy protection, Image
authentication, Broadcast monitoring, Indexing and Medical
safety areas. The objective of Copyright Protection is to
embed information about the source/owner of the digital
media. Fingerprinting objective is to convey information
about the recipient of digital media in order to identify every
single distributed copy of the media. Watermarking can be
used to control data copying the digital media in case the
watermark embedded in the media indicates that media is
copy protected. The objective of Image authentication is to
check the authenticity of the digital media. This requires the
detection of modifications to the data. By embedding
watermark in commercial advertisements, an automated
monitoring system can verify whether the advertisements are
broadcasted as contracted or not. Indexing of video mail,
indexing of movies and news items, where markers and
comments can be inserted that can be used by search engine.
In the case of Medical Safety it is for embedding the date and
patient’s name in medical images which could be useful for
safety measurement.
Invisible watermarking requires a reasonable robustness
against attacks such as compression, as well as little or no
degradation in subjective and objective image quality.
Watermarking in the frequency domain is more robust than
watermarking in the spatial domain [1], because the
watermark information can spread out to the entire image [2].
In the viewpoint of frequency, the high frequency area should
be avoided for robustness.
In order to have efficient watermarking, one should
consider three main criteria: robustness against attacks such as
compression, security and imperceptibility which is how
much the watermarked image is similar to the original one [3].
Early watermarking schemes that were introduced in the
spatial domain, where the watermark is added by modifying
pixel values of the host image. Examples of such techniques
are given in [3], [4] and [5].
Given its suitability to model the Human Visual
System(HVS) behaviour, the Discrete Wave Transform(DWT)
has gained interest among watermarking researchers, as it is
witnessed by the number of algorithms following this
approach that have been proposed over the last few years.
There are number of steganography techniques based on least
significant bits (LSB) for embedding message, however these
are highly insecure, because it can be easily detectable that the
data is hidden in cover object [6]. This problem can be
avoidable by hiding data using Bit-Plane Complexity
Segmentation (BPCS) steganography, in which image is
decomposed into bit planes of sub band wavelet coefficients
obtained by using Integer Wavelet Transform (IWT). At lower
levels of wavelet decomposition changes made in the cover
image can not identified by human naked eye. BPCS takes the

978-1-4244-2963-9/08/$25.00 © 2008 IEEE 58 ADCOM 2008

advantage of human naked eye. As the level of image
transformation using IWT increases maximum capacity that
can be embedded decreases, peak signal to noise ratio (PSNR)
decreases and bit error rate increases [6]. The data extracted
from cover image also depends on the complexity pattern of
the cover image.
The most advanced choice from all the frequency domain
method is DWT. Since, the magnitude of DWT coefficients
are larger in the lowest band at each level of decomposition, it
is possible to use a larger scaling factor for watermark
embedding. The method in [7] shows high PSNR values
between original and watermarked images even at level 3, but
shows poor robustness for various geometric and signal
processing attacks. Every watermark bit should be embedded
in each detail (i.e. horizontal, vertical and diagonal)
coefficient. Hence, the secret sorting method for
watermarking is proposed. .
II. JOO ET AL. ’S SCHEME
In 2002, Joo et al. proposed a robust watermark scheme by
embedding a watermark into wavelet low frequency sub-band
[8]. An image with size of 512 X 512 pixels is transformed
into wavelet coefficients by three level wavelet transform and
extract the sub-band CA3. Then CA3 is further decomposed
into four sub-bands and three sub-bands CH3, CV3 and CD3
are set to zeros. After performing inverse wavelet transform to
this level CA3’ is obtained. The information embedding
locations are obtained by sorting s(i,j) = | CA3 - CA3’| . In [9],
the embedding operation needs a round-operation. In 2005,
Lou et al. [9] improved [8] to keep S(i,j) as a secret key for
watermark embedding/extraction and the efficiency of [9] is
better than that in [8]. In 2004, Reddy et al. [10] calculated the
percentage of embedding sub-band. It gets the weight factors
from 1-level DWT of the watermark. During the extracting
phase, the original image and watermark are required for the
watermark extraction. This proposed method improves the
watermarking scheme in [10]. It does not need the help of the
weight coefficients of the original watermark and combines
some aspects of [8] to generate a secret stream for watermark
embedding. During the watermark embedding phase, we
utilize a secret stream to execute a XOR operation with
watermark and embed into the new sub-band CH3'.
III. PROPOSED SCHEME
The most straight-forward method of watermark
embedding, would be to embed the watermark into the least-
significant-bits of the cover object [11], but once the
algorithm is discovered, the embedded watermark could be
easily modified by an intermediate party. An improvement on
basic LSB substitution would be to use a pseudo random
number generator to determine the pixels to be used for
embedding based on a given “seed” or key [11]. Security of
the watermark would be improved as the watermark could no
longer be easily viewed by intermediate parties. The algorithm
however would still be vulnerable to replacing the LSB with a
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constant. Another technique for watermark embedding is to
exploit the correlation properties of additive pseudo-random
noise patterns as applied to an image [12]. A disadvantage of
spatial techniques is they do not allow for the exploitation of
the subsequent processing in order to increase the robustness
of the watermark. Some of the frequency based watermarking
techniques used the Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) like the
one suggested in 2004 by Yuehua Z. et al [13].This method is
robust against compression attacks. A common problem with
DCT watermarking is block based scaling of watermark
image changes scaling factors block by block and results in
visual discontinuity.
The proposed scheme first decomposes the host image by
3-scale discrete haar wavelet transform and uses the original
CA3 (low pass sub-band from third level) to get a new CA3'
( CA3 is further decomposed by 1-level and set the sub-bands
CH4, CV4 and CD4 to zero, and then apply inverse 1-level
DWT to retrieve the new CA3') by [9]. During the embedding
phase, a random seed is used to disturb the original watermark.
A. Watermark Embedding
The proposed scheme is based on the literature given in [8]
and [10]. The secret sort s(i, j) and the intensity coefficients k1
and k2 are used to improve the embedding intensity.
The embedding algorithm is as follows:
Step 1: Decompose a host image of size m x n by 3-level
DWT as shown in Fig.1
CA3 CH3
CH2
CV3 CD3
CH1
CV2 CD2
CV1 CD1
Fig.1. 3-level DWT decomposition
Step 2: Sub-band CA3 is decomposed by 1-level DWT
and set the sub-bands CH4, CV4 and CD4 to zero,
and then apply inverse 1-level DWT to retrieve the
new CA3'. Generate the secrete sort, s(i, j)= | CA3 –
CA3' | using Fig.2
 IV. PERFORMANCE EVALUATION
CA4 CH4 CA4 0 The performance of the proposed method is evaluated with
CA3 CA3' an 8-bit gray scale image of size 512X512 as the host image
CV4 CD4 0 0 and binary image with 64X64 pixels as the watermark image.
A. Performance Evaluation Metrics:

Watermarking algorithms are usually evaluated with

s(i,j) respect to two metrics: imperceptibility and robustness [14].

Imperceptibility means the perceived quality of the host

Fig. 2 Secrete sort generation image should not be distorted by the presence of the
CA3 is used to generate a new CH'3 by Eq. (1). watermark. As a measure of quality of a watermarked image,
PSNR is typically used. PSNR in decibels is given by Eq. (4).
′
CH 3 = CH 3 + {[ CA 3 ( i , j ) − CA 3 ( i + 1, j )] mod 2}......... (1) PSNR(dB)=10log10 (2552 /MSE) ……………… ….. (4)

Step 3: The position of attaching the secrete information is
calculated with the formula given in Eq. (2)
′
CH 3 " = CH 3 + (k1 * w(i, j ) ⊕ k 2 * s(i, j ))..............(2)
where k1 and k2 are embedding intensities. The watermark
image is disturbed by a random seed and embeds it into
CH3 '.
Step 4: An inverse wavelet transform is used to get the
watermarked image
B. Extraction Algorithm
The proposed method is a non-blind watermarking method,
hence the original host image is needed for extraction. The
watermark is extracted as follows:
Step 1: Both of the original host image and the watermarked
image are decomposed by 3-level wavelet transform.
Step 2: Getting secret sort s(i,j) from the original image.
Then, sub-bands CH3' and CH3 are generated by
Eq. (1).
Step 3: The embedded watermark image is retrieved by the
following equation:
′
w′(i, j ) = {[CH 3 " (i, j ) − CH 3 (i, j )] / k1 ⊕ [k 2 * s (i, j )]′} ……(3)
Robustness is a measure of the immunity of the watermark
against attempts to remove or degrade it, intentionally or
unintentionally, by different types of digital image processing
[15], like image compression, guassian noise and Image
cropping. The Gaussian noise is a watermark degrade attack,
Joint Photographic Experts Group(JPEG) compression is a
watermark removal attack and cropping is a watermark
dispositioning geometrical attack. The similarity between the
original watermark and the watermark extracted from the
attacked image using the correlation factor, ρ is given by
Eq.(5).
N N N
ρ = ∑ϖ i ω i ′ / ∑ϖ i ∑ϖ i
′ ………………..(5)
i =1 i =1 i =1
where N is the number of pixels in watermark, ω and ω' are
the original and watermarks respectively. The correlation
factor ρ may take values between 0 to1. In general, a
correlation coefficient of about 0.75 or above is considered
acceptable.
V. RESULTS
The experimental results of the proposed scheme are as
follows:
The original host image, original watermark image,
watermarked image and extracted watermark image are shown
in Fig. 3.

Step 4: After the Step3, a disturbed watermark is extracted

and recovered with the help of the random seed.

Step 5: 1-level inverse DWT is applied for the extracted

watermark coefficients to get the watermark.

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 watermark is recognizable. Beyond 300 it is some what
difficult to identify the extracted watermark.

(a) (b)

(a) (b)

(c) (d)
Fig. 3: (a) Original image (b) Original watermark (c)Watermarked image (c) (d)
(d)Extracted watermark Fig. 6. Extraction from rotation at (b) 50 and (d) 300

Compared to method [7] the PSNR between original image
and watermarked image is better in proposed method at level
3.
A. .Compression:
The performance of the compressed images evaluated for
20%, 30%, 40%, 50%, 60% and 70% qualities on the
watermarked image sequentially. The results of extracted are
shown in Fig. 4. All extracted watermarks are recognizable.
Table 1 shows the results of different qualities of compression
rates. Even for 20% compression also the watermark is
extractable. For more than 85 % the extracted watermark is
almost similar to watermark extracted without any
compression.
(a) (b)
Fig.4: Extraction from Compression at (a) 20% and (b) 70%
D. Salt and Pepper Noise:
Salt and pepper noise is added to the watermarked image
with different noise densities of 0.2, 0.4, 0.6, 0.8, 0.9 and 1.0.
Even for 1.0 noise density the extracted watermark is
recognizable.
(a) (b)
Fig. 7.Extraction of watermark from salt & pepper noise at noise densities
(a) 0.2 and (b) 0.4
E. Cropping:
The watermarked image is cropped to different block sizes,
150, 200, 250, 300, 350 and 400. Even when watermarked
image cropped to a block size of 150, still extracted
watermark is recognizable.

B. Scaling:
The watermarked image is scaled by 20%, 40%, 60%, 80%,
100% and 150%. In Fig. 5, the extracted watermarks are given,
which shows that even the watermarked image is scaled by
different values still extracted watermark is recognizable.
(a) (b)

(a) (b)
Fig. 5. Extraction from Resizing at (a) 20% and (b) 150%

C. Rotation:
The watermarked image is scaled by 10, 50, 100 , 150 , 200 (c) (d)
and 300. In Fig. 6, the extracted watermarks are shown for 50 Fig.8 Watermark Extraction from cropped image of (b) 20% and (d) 30%
and 300 rotation of watermarked image, still the extracted watermarked image.

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 The PSNR and correlation values for extracted watermark 2) Scaling: Fig.11 and Fig.12 show the results of
are shown in Table 1, Table 2, Table 3, Table 4 & Table 5 for extracting watermarks from scaled watermarked images.
compression, scaling, rotation, salt pepper noise and cropping When watermark image is scaled to 20% and 40% DCT and
respectively. DWT techniques failed to extract the watermark. The
proposed method is better results for all scaling values.
Table 1: PSNR and Correlation factor of the compressed Images
3) Rotation: Fig 13 and 14 show the results of extracted
compression 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% watermarks from rotated watermarked images. DCT method
rate
is having better PSNR and correlation factor values for
PSNR(dB) different angles of rotation compared to DWT and DWT with
51.3 51.45 51.57 51.59 51.61 52.1 secrete sorting methods. But the proposed method is having
Correlation 0.903 0.9085 0.912 0.9233 0.9269 0.9464
better results than DWT method.
factor
4) Cropping: As shown Fig.15 and Fig. 16, the proposed
Table 2: PSNR and Correlation Factor of the scaled Images method suffers much less from cropping attack compared
Scaling 20% 40% 60% 80% 100% 150%
DCT and DWT methods. But, DWT is having better
performance than DCT for this attack.
PSNR 41.04 43.51 44.17 45.18 48.92 49.98
(dB) 5) Salt and Pepper Noise: The robustness against salt and
Correlati- 0.4324 0.4625 0.5062 0.6904 0.8007 0.8123 pepper noise is tested for all three methods. Again the
on
factor proposed method is having good correlation value for
different noise densities. However the difference in PSNR
Table 3: PSNR and Correlation Factor of the rotated Images values is less compared to other two methods at 0.6, 0.8 and
Rotation 10 50 100 150 200 300 1.0 noise density values.
angle
(degrees)
PSNR 49.73 45.11 42.34 41.21 38.83 34.60
(dB)
Correlation 0. 81 0. 77 0. 71 0.70 0.69 0. 68
factor

Table 4: PSNR and Correlation Factor of the Salt & Pepper Noised images
Noise 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 0.9 1.0
density

PSNR 51.85 50.94 50.15 48.21 47.89 45.60

(dB)
Correlation 0.9178 0.9156 0.9145 0.8932 0.8670 0.8126
factor

Table 5: PSNR and Correlation Factor of Cropped images

Fig. 9 Correlation factor of different watermarking methods based on
Cropped 400 350 300 250 200 150 compression attack.
Block Size

PSNR 50.82 51.36 51.68 51.85 51.97 52.66

(dB)
Correlation 0.7108 0.7156 0.7845 0.8033 0.8349 0.8696
factor

F. Comparison of the proposed with various other techniques:

1) JPEG Compression: By observing Fig. 9 and Fig. 10
the robustness against the JPEG compression is higher for
DCT embedding algorithm [16] only for quality factor greater
than 50. But, the proposed method is having better PSNR and
Correlation factor values for lower quality factors of 20, 30,
40 and 50 compared to DCT and DWT [7] methods.
Fig. 10 PSNR of different watermarking methods based on compression
attack.

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 Fig. 14 Correlation factor of different watermarking methods based on
Fig. 11 Correlation factor of different watermarking methods based on rotation attack
scaling attacks

Fig. 15 PSNR of different watermarking methods based on cropping attack

Fig. 12 PSNR of different watermarking methods based on scaling attack

Fig. 16 Correlation factor of different watermarking methods based on

Fig. 13 PSNR of different watermarking methods based on rotation attack cropping attack

63

Fig.17 Correlation factor of different watermarking methods based on salt and
pepper noise attack
Fig.18 PSNR of different watermarking methods based on salt and pepper
noise attack
VI. CONCLUSION
The spatial domain watermarking scheme is vulnerable to
image processing attacks, hence, the proposed scheme
modifies the original image in transform domain and embeds
a watermark in the difference values to overcome the weak
robustness problem in spatial domain, and methods in [6] and
[7].
The time taken by the proposed scheme for embedding and
extraction of watermarking is several times less than using
Shoemaker’s method for embedding and extraction of JPEG
images and also it is more robust. The proposed method has
simple steps for watermarking and extraction and it is resistant
against many image processing attacks. But, the proposed
method is non-blind, which requires the original image for
extraction of the watermark. The proposed method is
compared with DCT [16] and DWT [7] methods. For JPEG
compression and rotation attacks the DCT is showing better
performance compared to proposed and DWT method. For
cropping, scaling and noise affects the proposed method is
more robust than other two methods.
Further research can be done in extending this work to
combined Discrete Cosine Transform-Discrete Wavelet
Transform, Dual Tree Complex Wavelet Transform and
Combined Discrete Cosine Transform-Dual Tree Complex
Wavelet Transform methods.
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