2020 International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Signal Processing (AISP)

DCT-DWT Based Digital Watermarking and

Extraction using Neural Networks
R S Kavitha1 , U Eranna2 , and M N Giriprasad3
1
Research Scholar, Department of ECE, JNTUA Ananthapuramu, AP, India.
2
Department of ECE, Ballari Institute of Technology and Management, Ballari, KTK, India.
3
Department of ECE, JNTUA Ananthapuramu, AP, India.
email: drkavithakavana@gmail.com, jayaveer 88@yahoo.com, mahendragiri1960@gmail.com

Abstract—Recent trends in information technology have mirac-

Distorted
ulously changed the way people interact with multimedia de- Watermarked Watermarked
vices. The steady and consistent developments in communication Water image Image Water
Recovered
Original Attacks/ Detection
technologies have created a situation where a massive amount Image
Embedding
Noise Algorithm
Watermark
Algorithm
of data and thereby information is created, stored and shared
every second. With an increased number of devices, backed by
•Robustness Attacks
enhanced communication technologies the insurgence towards Watermark •Presentation Attacks
originality and ownership of the data is increasing. Among •Counterfeiting Attacks
•Spatial domain
various other methods of protecting the originality and ownership •Additive Watermarking
of the digital data, watermarking has emerged to be a prominent •Least Significant Bit
•Texture Mapping Coding Technique
one. Watermarking allows the copyrighting of the data through •Patchwork Algorithm
algorithm-driven encoding techniques. Along with imperceptibil- •Correlation-Based Technique
•Frequency Domain
ity and robustness, digital watermarking also requires default •Discrete Cosine Transforms
•Discrete Wavelet Transforms
requirements such as security, fidelity, inseparability, payload •Discrete Fourier Transforms
capacity and effectiveness. For a digital watermark to be insep-
arable, the carrier signal(secret key) should remain undistorted
outside certain specific conditions. The aim here is to create an
algorithm which can efficiently create strong a digital watermark
and which can also extract the watermark without the need of Fig. 1. A typical digital watermarking process.
the original image using neural networks. Here we propose a
neural network-driven digital watermarking with functions in
frequency domain transformation. A strong DCT-DWT hybrid marks were created across Europe in the late 13th century and
algorithm is used to embed a visible watermark into the original
were inspired by steganographic techniques. Steganography
image and at later stages neural networks are deployed to extract
the watermark without the use of the original pure image. and watermarking are the two sides of a coin which role
Index Terms—Chaos, Secure communication, Signal generator, together. While Steganography focuses on making the data
double scroll. imperceptible to the unwanted user, watermarking tries to
control the robustness of the encoded noise. Though emerged
I. I NTRODUCTION out of conventional steganographic techniques, digital water-
The digitalization of information has paved a way to the marking has evolved to have its distinguished approaches and
massive and rapid creation of data in various types such as challenges.
image, audio, video, and transactions[1]. The sophistication of A typical digital watermarking process follows three major
technologies in data and information which are favoured by steps. The embedding stage is the first stage where the
the improvement in communication technologies have largely watermark is inserted. The distortion or attack stage is where
supported multimedia device users to create, store and share the supposed distortion of the watermarked image takes place
a massive amount of data every second. The amount of data which may or may not occur with an attack by a third user.
generated by the users has almost increased ten folds within The final step is the detection of the original image where the
the recent few years. With more of the user-generated data original image is retrieved out of the watermarked image.
stored and accessed through public domain platforms, unau- Varieties of digital watermarking are sought out in a wide
thorized and malicious use of data has increased which has spectrum of applications. With visible watermarks being the
lead to active requirements towards maintaining the originality most basic form, they usually find applications in video
and ownership of the data. Digital watermarking has emerged contents to show the ownership. On the other hand, invisible
as a prominent research area in this regard[2]. watermarks are used to maintain the originality of the image.
The work being carried out towards maintaining the orig- Robust watermarking is used to assign copyrights to digital
inality of the content or object has quite an old history. As content. Fragile watermarks are usually found sensitive to
a means to identify the papermaker, the first forms of water- changes in the signal and are used to protect the integrity

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 2020 International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Signal Processing (AISP)
TABLE I
L ITERATURE S URVEY FOCUSING ON OBTAINING SPECIFIC RESULTS AND TECHNIQUES
Authors
WANG Zhenfei et al., Davis et al.,Zhenfei Wang et al., Xue-Quan Xu et al.[5][6]
Jose Aguilar et al.
Qianhui Yi et al. [7]
Sameh Oueslati et. al
Song HUANG et al. [8]
Jun Sang et al.
Zhang et al.
Jun Zhang et al.
Mohamad Vafaei et al., Vafaei et al.,Cheng-Ri Piao et al.Nallagarla Ramamurthy et al. [9][10]
Pallavi Agrawal
Olanrewaju et al. [11][12]
of the digital information[3]. These being the major forms of
watermarks, their variations and selective combination such
as semi-fragile watermarks, invisible-robust watermarks, and
invisible-fragile watermarks also find task-specific applica-
tions. Further, the quality of digital watermarks is found to
be dependent on four major aspects[4]. Robustness of the
watermark usually has to be high enough to be able to resist
certain designated classes of transformations. The payload
capacity of the watermarks depends on the schemes used.
From one bit scheme to n-bit scheme, the capacity usually
determines how well the watermark can be detected by the
detection algorithm. The perceptibility of the watermark has
to be low enough to prevent detection from malicious users.
Most importantly, the embedding method determines how well
the watermark serves its purpose[13].
II. BACKGROUND
Watermarking can be achieved either by changing the least
significant pixel values or by changing the coefficient values.
The quality of the watermark depends on the method used.
The pixel variation method corresponds to a non-robust spatial
domain of transformation whereas the coefficient variation
technique refers to frequency domain variations[14]. Most
popular among which, being the frequency domain variation
method which includes Discrete transformation techniques of
cosine, Fourier, and wavelet parameters. Unlike the spatial
domain, frequency-domain methods are more efficient. The
watermark is embedded in spectral coefficients of the image
as the characteristics of the human visual system are better
captured in spectral coefficient[15][16]. Discrete wavelet trans-
form, as the name suggests uses small waves, namely wavelets
with different frequencies. As it points both to location and
frequency of the information, it is mostly used for audio and
video data compression. Digital cosine transform, on the other
hand, is a lossy compression method usually used for audio
and images. Along with strong energy compaction, it treats
individual frequencies uniquely[17][18][19]. These algorithms
are usually found robust against brightness, contrast and low
pass filtering adjustments. Discrete Fourier transform modifies
continues functions into discrete coefficients of frequencies.
The recent decade has seen significant research in the
domain. The term ’Digital Watermark’ was first coined by
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Technique Remarks
DWT Robustness
Spatial domain
DWT Imperceptibility
DCT
Arnold Transform Invisibility
Spatial domain
Multiwavelet Transform
Multiwavelet Transform
DWT Imperceptibility and robustness
DCT,CWT Robustness an Adaptability
Fourier Transform Fidelity
Andrew Terkel and Charles Osborne in 1992. The major
studies on the domain caught fire in the early 2000s[20]. In
1999 watermarking as a technique to hide secret information
within images for labelling digital pictures was proposed
by Hsu C-T., et al[21]. Nikolaidis N et al. gave a birds-
view on various other data hiding techniques to protect the
copyright of still images around the same time. During 2002,
Lihyang et al. put forward a detection based algorithm which
was applied to the attacked signal in an attempt to recover
the watermark[22][23]. Faithful results in this regards were
obtained confirming that if the signal were unobliterated, the
watermark could be extracted completely. Mathew et al. in
2010, proposes an image watermarking scheme which was
based on Singular Value Decomposition method. The result
was found to be more robust and secure. Rather than using
fixed orthogonal bases, the method contradicted giving good
accuracy, imperceptibility and robustness[24]. In 2013 Kaur
G et al. proposed the Least Significant Bit watermarking
technique which mainly focused on the security of the applied
image[25]. However, it was understood that LSB being a
spatial domain, it could be easily identified and thus was
a loose chain. The very next year Zargar et al. showed
that the LSB method could be enhanced by doing an and
operation with MSB of the watermarked image[26]. Based
on this technique a simple watermarking algorithm was given
which was resistant to several attacks. In 2016, Kaur S et
al. presented a hybrid watermarking technique[27]. It used
Singular Value decomposition along with Discrete transforms
of Fourier and wavelet coefficients. The repeated iterative
function of the Kalman filter was used to enhance the quality
of the watermarked image[28]. Diagonal components of value
decomposition followed by LH filtering of Wavelet transform
which was protected by a middle-frequency level of cosine
transforms were in combination. Table 1. Shows an extended
literature survey focusing on obtaining specific application
based advantages[29][30]. Adapting the most suitable tech-
nique for particularly required advantage has to be inferred
from the table.
III. E XPERIMENTATION AND R ESULT ANALYSIS
It has now to be appreciated that frequency domain trans-
form techniques give far better results when compared to
 2020 International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Signal Processing (AISP)

spatial domain transformation. In particular, DWT is more Algorithm 2 Watermarking using DWT (PART II)
reliable as it gives multi-resolution characteristics along with Require: inputimg : C
faithful spatial localization. On the other hand, DCT embeds x[n] : random watermark generator
the watermark into the coefficients of middle frequency mak- outputimg : watermarked image by x.
ing the watermarked image resistant to a wide range of attacks. while image is 2D or 3D do
In this work, the authors develop a hybrid algorithm which start encoding model;
uses both DWT and DCT techniques to embed the watermark if inputimg > required size then
into the image. Unlike conventional watermarking techniques, start encoding model:
two types of watermarks are simultaneously embedded into the image encoding process starts;
original image. initially, DCT is applied to the original image read C;
to generate a visible Watermark. This DCT watermarked compute variations in C;
image is then fed into the DWT system where it embeds compute size and array matrix of C;
the previously watermarked image with invisible watermark. A = apply DWT to C;
Thus the hybrid algorithm is used to make the watermarked x[n] = generate random array;
image more imperceptible and highly resistant to a wide if visual masking = enabled then
range of attacks. Further, Neural networks are used to extract D = cast image with x;
watermark out of the distorted image as shown in Fig. 2. visualization[boxsize]=1;
end if
Algorithm 1 Watermarking using DCT (PART I) else {inputimg < required size}
Require: inputimg : original image resize image;
k : watermark end if
outputimg : watermarked image by k. return encoded image D;
while setup do end while
start encoding model;
if inputimg > required size then Algorithm 3 Extracting watermark using neural networks
start encoding model: (PART III)
image encoding process starts; Require: inputimg : distorted image, difference image;
read original image; outputimg : image, watermark;
compute variations in image; while setup do
compute size and array matrix of image; start decoding model;
A = apply DCT to original image; image decoding process starts;
read watermark image; read distorted image;
B = apply DCT to watermark image; if distortion > n then
else {inputimg < required size} apply correction filter;
resize image; else {distortion < n}
end if check DWT rule;
C = combine A and B; apply neural network[hidden stage one];
return C; compare difference image;
end while apply neural network[hidden stage two];
end if
return image;
A. Algorithm part I: Discrete Cosine Transform return watermark;
The first part of the algorithm consists of a DCT system end while
which applies watermark into the mid-frequency coefficients
of the image. Considering the above represented ’Algorithm
1’, The original image [Fig. 3(a)]to be encoded is fed into the to the watermarked image. It should be noted at this stage
system. A watermark in Fig. 3(b) is then initialized. While the that the watermark being embedded in this stage is a visible
embedding is initialized, the system first computes variations watermark. The obtained result of visible watermarked image
in the original image. Secondly, once the variations have is shown in Fig. 3(c).
stored the size and array matrix of the image is computed.
Discrete Cosine Transform is then applied to the original B. Algorithm part II: Discrete Wavelet Transform
image. Further, the watermark image is initialized and resized The second part of the algorithm is the Discrete Wavelet
to the suitable size of the original image. DCT is then applied Transform system. The system encodes the image with an
to the watermark image. Now, both transformed images of invisible, randomly generated watermark. The DWT system
original and watermark are combined during the final encoding is known to embed every discrete wavelet of the image
process. after the encoding is finished, Inverse DCT is applied separately. Initially, the wavelet variations of the watermarked

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 2020 International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Signal Processing (AISP)

Fig. 2. Extraction process of watermarked image.

Fig. 3. Stage by stage obtained results. (a)Original image; (b)Watermark image for DCT; (c)DCT watermarked image; (d)DWT watermarked image;
(e)Subtracted difference image; (f)Distorted image; (g)Extracted image; (h)Extracted watermark.

image from the ’Algorithm 1’ is computed. It should be noted
that the original image for this algorithm will be the visible
watermarked image from the previous algorithm. Once the size
of the image is set, the DWT operation is applied. The lowest
coefficient of the DWT is calculated and is stored in a variable.
Further, the system generates a random array following a
pre-specified rule. This rule will later be considered while
extracting the watermark in the next algorithm. Once the
random array is ready, the process of visual masking is
initiated. This is the step wherein the random key will be cast
into the image to give the watermarked image. The condition
that if the visual masking is enabled, the visualization with
block size is set to high. Similarly low for the contrary. The
output of this stage is shown in Fig. 3(d).
C. Algorithm part III: Extracting the Watermark using neural
network
Even before the watermark can be extracted, it is important
to differentiate the original and the watermarked image. This
has to be done to check the strength of the watermarked
image compared to the original image. The subtraction of
the original image from the watermarked image was done
in this regard. Fig. 3(e) shows the difference image where
every white pixel is the varied pixel when compared to the
original image. Fig. 3(f) shows the distorted image which will
be considered for the extraction of the watermark. During the
extraction of the watermark, the image is filtered to correct the
distortion to some extent. The DWT watermark is checked for
presence according to the rule set in ’Algorithm 2’. The DWT
watermark is then extracted if present through first hidden
stage of the neural network. The subtracted image Fig 2(e)
is then used to compare the pixels. Once the pixels of the
distorted image is compared with subtracted image pixels, the
watermark can be extracted by the second hidden layer of the
neural network. Thus the visible watermark is extracted. Fig
3(g) and Fig 3(h) show, the extracted original and watermark
images.
The performance of the proposed algorithm is checked to
verify its effectiveness. The algorithm was applied to a famous
image, Lena and output at each stage were recorded. The
hybrid algorithm is found to be effective in watermarking and
extracting the watermark after the distortion. As the proposed
algorithm uses two sets of discrete transform techniques to
embed two distinguished watermarks into the image, the wa-
termark is found to be resistive to most of the possible attacks.
Further, the neural network works phenomenally in extracting
the watermark without the need of original image.However, the
quality of the image obtained after extraction is found to be

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 2020 International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Signal Processing (AISP)
reduced. Finally, the quality and consistency of the algorithm
has to be analysed.
IV. C ONCLUSION
A hybrid algorithm was developed and proposed to digi-
tally watermark image. The systems uses two techniques to
produce a strong watermark. Discrete cosine transform is first
applied to obtain the visible watermarked image. Further, the
discrete wavelet transform is applied to embed an invisible
watermark into the image. This hybrid technique makes the
watermark strong and effective. On the other hand, extraction
of watermark and the original image was also carried out using
an extraction algorithm using a two stage neural network.
It was found in later stages of output that the extracted
image has retarded image quality when compared to the input
image. Further, stronger techniques have to be developed in
the future. An extensive realization revealed that the use of
neural networks gives appreciable results. With the advent of
Deep learning, Deep Neural Networks [DNN] will be explored
to encode and decode the watermark in the future works.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors would like to express their gratitude to JNTUA,
Ananthapuramu for providing the necessary infrastructure to
carry out this work.
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