IMAGE
WATERMARKING
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Watermarking
Definition
Types
Requirements
Procedure
Visual Models
Information Hiding
Applications
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What is Watermarking?
Digital watermarking is a technique for
inserting information (the watermark)
into an image, which can be later
extracted or detected for variety of
purposes including identification and
authentication purposes. 3
A watermark may be:
Fragile: distorted or broken under slight
changes
Semi-fragile: designed to break under all
changes that exceed a user specified threshold
Robust: withstand moderate to severe signal
processing attacks.
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The requirements for image adaptive
watermarking schemes are
Tranparency: the watermark is not visible in the image under typical
viewing conditions.
Capacity: ability to detect watermarks with a low probability of
error as the number of watermarked versions of the
image increases
Robust: the watermark can still be detected after the image has
undergone some linear or non linear operations
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The image adaptive
watermarking procedure
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Watermark is inserted to the DCT
coeffients of the each block of the image
by using the technique below:
Yk (u,v) = Xk(u,v)+Jk(u,v)Wk (u,v) |Xk (u,v)| >
Jk(u,v)
Xk (u,v) elsewhere
Verification of a marked image Z:
W’(u,v)=[X(u,v)-Z(u,v)]/J(u,v)
ρ=W.W’/([Link]’)1/2
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How can we determine the Threshold
J(u,v) in watermark embedding?
VISUAL MODELS
Frequency Sensitivity: the human eye’s sensitivity to sine wave
gratings at various frequencies
(depens on viewing conditions)
Luminance Sensitivity: the effects of the detecteability threshold
of noise on a constant background
(depends on the image)
Contrast masking: to the detect ability of one signal in the presence of
another signal and the effect is strongest when both
signals are of the same spatial frequency
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original α = 0.1 α = 0.4 α = 0.6
N = 4000
original N = 2000 N = 6000
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Fragile Image Watermarks:
The features a fragile watermarking system should
have can be stated as follows:
A fragile marking system should be able to detect any changes made in a marked image
after marking.
The detector should be able to locate and characterize alterations made to an image.
The marking key should be difficult to be extracted from the marked image without the
correct
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Information Hiding
Information Hiding is a general term encompassing
many subdisciplines
Two important subdisciplines are: steganography and
Watermarking
Steganography:
Hiding: keeping the existence of the information secret
Watermarking:
Hiding: making the information imperceptible
Information hiding is different than cryptography
(cryptography is about protecting the content of
messages)
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Watermarking applications
1. Copyright protection:
Embed information about the owner to prevent others from claiming
copyright
Require very high level of robustness
2. Copy protection: Embed watermark to disallow
unauthorized copying of the cover
For example, a compliant DVD player will not playback or copy data
that carry a “copy never” watermark
3. Content Authentication:
Embed a watermark to detect modifications to the cover
The watermark in this case has low robustness, “fragile”
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Watermarking
Applications
4. Transaction Tracking:
Embed a watermark to convey information about the legal
recipient of the cover
This is useful to monitor or trace back illegally produced
copies of the cover
This is usually referred to as “fingerprinting”
5. Broadcast Monitoring:
Embed a watermark in the cover and use automatic
monitoring to verify whether cover was broadcasted as
agreed
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Image watermarking
finish
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