Reversible Color Image Watermarking Scheme

Based on Contourlet Transform and Principal

Component Analysis
2021 7th International Conference on Electrical Energy Systems (ICEES) | 978-1-7281-7612-3/20/$31.00 ©2021 IEEE | DOI: 10.1109/ICEES51510.2021.9383746

Reena Thomas Sucharitha M

Research Scholar, Associate Professor,
Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering, Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering,
Noorul Islam Centre for Higher Education, Malla Reddy College of Engineering and Technology,
Kumaracoil,Tamilnadu, India Hyderabad,Telangana, India
reenaresearch@gmail.com sucharitha_m2002@yahoo.co.in

Abstract— It became an important issue to protect the
ownership and prevent unauthorized access. A blind and
reversible watermarking technique is introduced in this work.
The watermark will be generated from the host image and
owner identity. Gray Level Co-occurrence Matrix can be used
for key generation. Contourlet Transform is used to partition
the image into multiple sub-bands. Principal Component
Analysis is used to identify the appropriate bands that can be
used for embedding the watermark. For the extraction of
watermark, secret key and ownership id are required. This
technique ensures superior performance in contrast with other
techniques while calculating Bit Error Rate and Peak Signal to
Noise Ratio.
Keywords— Watermarking, Gray Level Co-occurrence
Matrix, Contourlet Transform, Principal Component Analysis,
Peak Signal to Noise Ratio, Secret Key.
nature and linear complexity [5]. The adaptive nature applies
to the variation in watermark size. Adaptive dual
watermarking methods embed watermark image bits into the
solitary vectors of the sub-bands of contourlet output.
However this method is not robust against motion blur
attacks and salt & pepper noise [6].
In the presented work, an efficient watermarking
approach incorporating Contourlet Transform (CT), Gray
Level Co occurrence Matrix (GLCM) and Principal
Component Analysis (PCA) is introduced. This paper is
arranged in the following order. Section I provides
introduction, Section II provides a detailed explanation on
the proposed methodology. A detailed discussion on
experimental results is given in III section and finally IV
section displays the conclusion of the paper.

II. Me t h o d o l o g y
I. In t r o d u c t i o n
A blind watermarking approach specifically for color
A digital image is a set of pixels, and can be easily
images is introduced through the combination of spatial and
captured with the help of cameras or scanners. With the
frequency domain characteristics. The watermark is added to
increment in the usage of internet and expansion of imaging
the low frequency sub-bands which are less correlated. The
devices, the distribution and access of digital images have
authentication of watermark is performed in the blind mode.
become popular. But, majority of these distribution and
The functional block diagram of proposed color image
access may be unauthorized. A secure validation system is
watermark embedding method is illustrated in Fig 1.
necessary to assure the ownership of digital image in
circumstances where the originality of an image can get
questioned.
A commonly used scheme for watermarking is the
histogram based approach [1]. Pre-calculated histogram
values are utilized to embed watermark. The major objective
of this technique is a way to provide better allocation of
intensities on a histogram. This allows lower contrast areas
in the image areas to attain higher contrast. The principle
behind transform based approaches is to embed the given
watermark into the transformed domain coefficients of the
host image. Inverse of the applied transform is taken to
generate the final watermarked image [2]. Discrete Cosine
Transform (DCT) associated watermark embedding
terminologies [3] provided good robustness against common
attacks. But, random spread of noise over the DCT
coefficients affects the extraction process adversely. Here
watermark was added on the radius of the magnitude of
Fourier transform [4] so as to maximize the PSNR value and
minimize quality degradation. The radius of watermark alters
according to the image size and therefore it is image
dependent. This method offers security, device
independence, adaptability and robustness. But, the
watermark is comprised of circular dots occurred due to
random noise and this will result in low capacity. Discrete
Wavelet Transform (DWT) is generally applied for obtaining Fig. 1. Watermark Embedding Process
robust color image watermarking because of its, adaptive

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 In this method, GLCM is generated for individual
channels of the color host image. GLCM calculates the
repetition of occurrence of pixel having intensity i
horizontally adjacent to pixel with intensity j. The secret key
calculated from the GLCM is utilized as a seed in the
watermark generation process. Contourlet transform provides
flexibility in presenting multi resolution image presentation
of the moment (M) are computed from the GLCM of cover
image (I). Mean of the eigen values are used as secret key
(K). In this step, a random number (R) is used for host
image owner identification.
M = G x GT
(i)

i
as shown in Fig. 2. CT contributes adequate description in (2)

II
.....*n ]

<N
spatial as well as directional resolutions. The primary phases
in this transform are Laplacian Pyramid (LP) and Directional
..... + e n
Filter Bank (DFB). Less correlated sub bands obtained from (3)
the CT are used for embedding watermark with the help of n
PCA.
The watermark (w) is generated by concatenating the
binary of key (y) and binary of owner id (s).

w = y || 5 (4)

Next step is to embed the generated watermark into the

cover image. Contourlet transform is employed on I. Using
PCA, sub-bands (L and H) are selected from the
transformed image. Then the binary values of these sub
bands are calculated.

L b = binary (L); H B = binary ( H ) (5)

The watermarked sub bands are computed by performing

XOR operation represented as,

WL = L b © w; WH = L h © w (6)

Then, inverse PCA is performed to extend the

watermark all through the cover image. Finally, inverse
transform of the contourlet is carried out to obtain the
watermarked final image.

Fig. 2. Contourlet transform (a) Block diagram, (b) Frequency

decomposition

PCA is an efficient tool for reducing dimensionality

which uses orthogonal transformation. It converts a group of
interrelated variables into independent principal components.
The first principal component has maximum concentration of
energy. PCA will efficiently choose significant sub bands for
precise embedding of the watermark.
The watermark creation operation involves secret key
development phase and watermark development phase. Fig. 3. Watermark Extraction Process
During the secret key generation phase, the eigen values (E)

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 The procedure for extracting the watermark is illustrated image using naked eye. Higher PSNR leads to the increment
in Fig 3. This hybrid method requires only secret key (K) in the quality of watermarked images.
and the identification number (R) of the user for watermark
extraction and hence it is a blind scheme. The watermark TABLE II. P e r f o r m a n c e C o m pa r is o n
(w) is estimated with the help of K and R . At the extraction
stage, the watermarked color image is split into R, G and B M ethodology PSNR BER

channels. The uncorrelated sub bands Wl and Wh are Scale-Space + Contourlet [7] 38.93 6.84
provided by the application of CT and PCA. XOR operation Multistage Contourlet [8] 42.82 5.93
with W can obtain the watermark w ’. Proposed (Contourlet + PCA) 46.22 3.52

III. Re s u l t s a n d Di s c u s s io n s

Several experiments were performed to assess the 48

efficiency of the developed watermarking technique. Eight

color images having size 512 x 512 were used from the
dataset of test images. The assessment of performance is
performed in the context of transparency as well as bit error
rate. The host image and resultant watermarked final image
are depicted in Fig 4.

Scale-Space + Contourlet Multistage Contourlet Proposed

Methodology

Fig. 5. Comparison o f PSNR

Fig. 4. Results (a) Host image (b) Watermarked Image

The transparency of the embedded watermark is

analyzed by identifying the dissimilarity between host
images and corresponding watermarked one. PSNR is
Scale-Space + Cortou riet Multistage Contourlet Proposed
calculated between the host and watermarked images. Bit
error rate (BER) is described as the rate of incorrect Methodology

extracted watermark (Be ) bits per original watermark bits

Fig. 6. Comparison o f BER
(Bt ).
PSNR = 10log101 | dB (7) The performance of the proposed watermarking system
10( MSE ) is evaluted using different test images and it is found to be
B
superior compared to other methods [7]. The average value
BER(%) = E x 100 (8)
Bt of PSNR is 46.22 dB and it is high compared to other
methods [8]. The value of BER is 3.52 and it is low
TABLE I. P e r f o r m a n c e E v a l u a t io n compared to other watermarking techniques as illustrated in
Fig 5 and Fig 6.
H ost Image PSN R (dB) BER (%)
Baboon 44.55 3.71
Lena 45.68 3.63 IV. Co n c l u s io n

Pepper 49.32 3.21

An advanced reversible watermarking technique is
Fruits 45.97 3.53 introduced in this work. The watermark has been generated
Barbara 44.92 3.64 from the host image and owner identity. GLCM was used
Flowers 45.94 3.58 for key generation. Contourlet transform was used to
Bridge 46.20 3.52 separate the image sub bands. PCA was used to identify the
Goldhill 47.21 3.37
appropriate bands for embedding the watermark. Secret key
and ownership id were used for the successful extraction of
watermark. This method provides a mean PSNR of 46.22
The comparison of PsNR and BER for various host dB and BER of 3.52. This technique provides better
images is depicted in Table 1. It is a tedious task to identify performance compared to other methods in terms of BER
the differences between the watermarked image and host and PSNR.

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 Re f e r e nc e s
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