CONTENTS

SR. NAME OF FIGURES PAGE NO.

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1. Introduction 2

2. What is DIGITAL WATERMARK 3

3. History 3

4. Classification of watermarking techniques 4

5. How Watermarking is Different from 6

Steganography and Cryptography?

6. General Framework 9

7. Features of digital watermarking 10

8. Discrete Wavelet Transform 11

9. Existing Image Watermarking Techniques 19

10. Algorithms of Watermarking 24

11. Experimental Results 36

12. Applications of Watermarking 38

13. Conclusions 40

14. Future scope 41

15. References 42

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 1. Introduction

The recent progress in the digital multimedia technologies has offered many
facilities in the transmission, reproduction and manipulation of data. However, this
advancement has also brought the challenge such as copyright protection for
content providers. Digital watermarking is one of the proposed solutions for
copyright protection of multimedia data. This technique is better than Digital
Signatures and other methods because it does not increase overhead.
Digital watermarking is not a very old field. Most of research is going on in this
field. Researchers try to invent techniques that increase the security, capacity, and
imperceptibility of watermarked images.
Suppose a person X creates an Image and publish it on the web. A person Y with
bad intentions steals the Image, maybe modify it little bit and then start selling, as
it was his own. X notices that Y is selling his Image. But how can he prove that he
is really the owner and make Y to pay him a lot of money?
Many solutions are there to solve this problem like digital signatures. But these
solutions need additional bandwidth. So, Due to limitations of the traditional
copyright protection system, a new technique came in existence. This technique is
known as digital watermarking.

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 2. What is Digital Watermark?
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.
Also referred to as simply watermark, a pattern of bits inserted into a digital image,
audio, video or text file that identifies the file's copyright information (author,
rights, etc.). The name comes from the faintly visible watermarks imprinted on
stationary that identify the manufacturer of the stationery. The purpose of digital
watermarks is to provide copyright protection for intellectual property that's in
digital format.

3. History of Watermarking
More than 700 years ago, paper watermarks were used in Fabriano, Italy to
indicate the paper brand and the mill that produced it. After their invention,
watermarks quickly spread over Italy and then over Europe, and although
originally used to indicate the paper brand or paper mill, they later served as
indication for paper format, quality, and strength and were also used to date and
authenticate paper.
By the 18th century it began to be used as anti-counterfeiting measures on money
and other documents. They are still widely used as security features in currency
today.
The term watermark was introduced near the end of the 18th century. It was
probably given because the marks resemble the effects of water on paper. The first
example of a technology similar to digital watermarking is a patent filed in 1954
by Emil Hembrooke for identifying music works.

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In 1988, Komatsu and Tominaga appear to be the first to use the term “digital
watermarking”.

4. Classification of Watermarking Techniques

Digital Watermarking techniques can be classified in a number of ways depending
on different parameters. Various types of watermarking techniques are enlisted
below. Each of the different types mentioned below have different applications.

Inserted Media Category: watermarking techniques can be categorized on the basis

of whether they are used for Text, Image, Audio or Video.
Robust & Fragile Watermarking: Robust watermarking is a technique in which
modification to the watermarked content will not affect the watermark. As opposed
to this, fragile watermarking is a technique in which watermark gets destroyed
when watermarked content is modified or tampered with.
Visible & Transparent Watermarking: Visible watermarks are ones, which are
embedded in visual content in such a way that they are visible when the content is
viewed. Transparent watermarks are imperceptible and they cannot be detected by
just viewing the digital content.
Inserting Watermark Type: Watermark can be inserted in the form of noise Tagged
information, or Image.
Public & Private Watermarking: In public watermarking, users of the content are
authorized to detect the watermark while in private watermarking the users are not
authorized to detect the watermark.
Asymmetric & Symmetric Watermarking: Asymmetric watermarking (also called
asymmetric key watermarking) is a technique where different keys are used for
embedding and detecting the watermark. In symmetric watermarking (or

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symmetric key watermarking) the same keys are used for embedding and detecting
watermarks.
Steganographic&Non-Steganographic watermarking: Steganographic
watermarking is the technique where content users are unaware of the presence of
a watermark. In nonsteganographic watermarking, the users are aware of the
presence of a watermark. Steganographic watermarking is used in fingerprinting
applications while nonsteganographic watermarking techniques can be used to
deter piracy.

public

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5. How Watermarking is Different from Steganography and Cryptography?

5.1 Steganography and Watermarking

Watermarking is not a new technique. It is descendent of a technique known as
steganography, which has been in existence for at least a few hundred years.
Steganography is a technique for concealed communication. Here the existence of
the message that is communicated is a secret and its presence is known only by
parties involved in the communication.
In Steganography a secret message is hidden within another unrelated message
and then communicated to the other party. As opposed to this in Watermarking
again one message is hidden in another, but two messages are related to each other
in some way.
Steganographic methods are in general not robust, i.e., the hidden information
cannot be recovered after data manipulation. Watermarking, as opposed to
steganography, has the additional notion of robustness against attacks. Even if the
existence of the hidden information is known it is difficult—ideally impossible—
for an attacker to destroy the embedded watermark, even if the algorithmic
principle of the watermarking method is public.

5.2 Cryptography vs. Watermarking

Watermarking is a totally different technique from cryptography. Cryptography
only provides security by encryption and decryption. However, encryption cannot
help the seller monitor how a legitimate customer handles the content after
decryption. So there is no protection after decryption. As shown in the figure 5.1 in
this case Customer can make illegal copies of the digital content. Unlike
cryptography, watermarks can protect content even after they are decoded .

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Figure 5.1 Cryptography cannot prevent illegal replication of the digital content

Other difference is cryptography is only about protecting the content of the

messages. Because watermarks are inseparable from the cover in which they are
embedded so in addition to protecting content they provide many other
applications also, like copyright protection, copy protection, ID card security etc.
Also the concept of breaking the system is different for cryptosystems and
watermarking systems. A cryptographic system is broken when the attacker can
read the secrete message. But Breaking of a watermarking system has two stages:
1.) The attacker can detect that watermarking has been used.
2.) The attacker is able to read, modify or remove the hidden message.

Watermarking Attacks
A robust watermark should survive a wide variety of attacks both incidental
(Means modifications applied with a purpose other than to destroy the watermark)
and malicious (attacks designed specifically to remove or weaken the watermark).
Next, we introduce some of the best known attacks.

Simple attacks: (other possible names include “waveform attacks” and “noise
attacks”) are conceptually simple attacks that attempt to impair the embedded
watermark by manipulations of the whole watermarked data (host data plus

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watermark) without an attempt to identify and isolate the watermark. Examples
include filtering, compression (JPEG, MPEG), addition of noise, addition of an
offset, cropping, Digital to analog and analog to digital conversion.

Detection-disabling attacks: (other possible names include “synchronization

attacks”) are attacks that attempt to break the correlation and to make the recovery
of the watermark impossible or infeasible for a watermark detector, mostly by
geometric distortion like zooming, shift in (for video) direction, rotation, cropping,
pixel permutations, subsampling, removal or insertion of pixels or pixel clusters, or
any other geometric transformation of the data.

Ambiguity attacks: (other possible names include “deadlock attacks,” “inversion

attacks,” “fakewatermark attacks,” and “fake-original attacks”) are attacks that
attempt to confuse by producing fake original data or fake watermarked data. An
example is an inversion attack that attempts to discredit the authority of the
watermark by embedding one or several additional watermarks such that it is
unclear which was the first, authoritative watermark.

Removal attacks: are attacks that attempt to analyze the watermarked data,
estimate the watermark or the host data, separate the watermarked data into host
data and watermark, and discard only the watermark. Examples are collusion
attacks, denoising, certain filter operations, or compression attacks using synthetic
modeling of the image (e.g., using texture models or 3-D models). Also included in
this group are attacks that are tailored to a specific watermarking scheme.
It should be noted that the transitions between the groups are sometimes fuzzy and
that some attacks do not clearly belong to one group.

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 6. General Framework for Digital Watermarking
Digital watermarking is similar to watermarking physical objects except that the
watermarking technique is used for digital content instead of physical objects. In
digital watermarking a low energy signal is imperceptibly embedded in another
signal. The low energy signal is called watermark and it depicts some metadata,
like security or rights information about the main signal. The main signal in which
the watermark is embedded is referred to as cover signal since it covers the
watermark. The cover signal is generally a still image, audio clip, video sequence
or a text document in digital format.

watermark

Digital Watermarking System

The digital watermarking system essentially consists of a watermark embedder and

a watermark detector .The watermark embedder inserts a watermark onto the cover
signal and the watermark detector detects the presence of watermark signal.
Note that an entity called watermark key is used during the process of embedding
and detecting watermarks. The watermark key has a one-to-one correspondence
with watermark signal (i.e., a unique watermark key exists for every watermark
signal). The watermark key is private and known to only authorized parties and it
ensures that only authorized parties can detect the watermark. Further, note that the
communication channel can be noisy and hostile (i.e., prone to security attacks)

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and hence the digital watermarking techniques should be resilient to both noise and
security attacks.

7. Features of Digital Watermarking

As mentioned earlier, digital watermarking techniques are useful for embedding
metadata in multimedia content. There are alternate mechanisms like using the
header of a digital file to store meta-information. However, for inserting visible
marks in images & video and for adding information about audio in audio clip etc.
the digital watermarking technique is appealing, since it provides following main
features :-
Imperceptibility: The embedded watermarks are imperceptible both perceptually as
well as statistically and do not alter the aesthetics of the multimedia content that is
watermarked. The watermarks do not create visible artifacts in still images, alter
the bit rate of video or introduce audible frequencies in audio signals.
Robustness: Depending on the application, the digital watermarking technique can
support different levels of robustness against changes made to the watermarked
content. If digital watermarking is used for ownership identification, then the
watermark has to be robust against any modifications. The watermarks should not
get degraded or destroyed as a result of unintentional or malicious signal and
geometric distortions like analog-to digital conversion, digital-to-analog
conversion, cropping, resampling, rotation, dithering, quantization, scaling and
compression of the content. On the other hand, if digital watermarking is used for
content authentication, the watermarks should be fragile, i.e., the watermarks
should get destroyed whenever the content is modified so that any modification to
content can be detected.
Inseparability: After the digital content is embedded with watermark, separating
the content from the watermark to retrieve the original content is not possible.
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Security: The digital watermarking techniques prevent unauthorized users from
detecting and modifying the watermark embedded in the cover signal. Watermark
keys ensure that only authorized users are able to detect/modify the watermark.

8. Discrete Wavelet Transformation

The transform of a signal is just another form of representing the signal. It
does not change the information content present in the signal. The Wavelet
Transform provides a time-frequency representation of the signal. It was developed
to overcome the shortcoming of the Short Time Fourier Transform (STFT), which
can also be used to analyze non-stationary signals. While STFT gives a constant
resolution at all frequencies, the Wavelet Transform uses multi-resolution
technique by which different frequencies are analyzed with different resolutions.
A wave is an oscillating function of time or space and is periodic. In contrast,
wavelets are localized waves. They have their energy concentrated in time or space
and are suited to analysis of transient signals. While Fourier Transform and STFT
use waves to analyze signals, the Wavelet Transform uses wavelets of finite
energy.

Difference between Wave and Wavelet (a) wave (b) wavelet.

In wavelet analysis the signal to be analyzed is multiplied with a wavelet function

and then the transform is computed for each segment generated. The Wavelet
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Transform, at high frequencies, gives good time resolution and poor frequency
resolution, while at low frequencies, the Wavelet Transform gives good frequency
resolution and poor time resolution.

DWT stands for Discrete Wavelet Transformation. It is the Transformation of

sampled data, e.g. transformation of values in an array, into wavelet coefficients.
IDWT is Inverse Discrete Wavelet Transformation: The inverse procedure that
converts wavelet coefficients into the original sampled data.

8.1. Decomposition Process

The image is high and low-pass filtered along the rows and the results of each filter
are down- sampled by two. Those two sub-signals correspond to the high and low
frequency components along the rows and are each of size N by N/2. Each of those
sub-signals is then again high and low-pass filtered, but this time along the column
data. The results are again down-sampled by two.

Figure 8.1 One decomposition step of the two dimensional image

In this way the original data is split into four sub-images each of size N/2 by N/2
containing information from different frequency components. Figure 8.1 shows the

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one decomposition step of the two dimensional grayscale image. Figure 8.2 shows
the four sub-bands in the typical arrangement.

Figure 8.2 One DWT decomposition step

The LL sub-band is the result of low-pass filtering both the rows and columns and
contains a rough description of the image. Therefore the LL sub-band is also called
the approximation sub-band. The HH sub-band was high-pass filtered in both
directions and contains the high-frequency components along the diagonals. The
HL and LH images are the result of low-pass filtering in one direction and high-
pass filtering in the other direction. LH contains mostly the vertical detail
information, which corresponds to horizontal edges. HL represents the horizontal
detail information from the vertical edges. All three sub-bands HL, LH and HH are
called the detail sub-bands, because they add the high-frequency detail to the
approximation image.
8.2. Composition Process
The inverse process is shown in figure 8.3. The information from the four sub-
images is up-sampled and then filtered with the corresponding inverse filters along
the columns. The two results that belong together are added and then again up-
sampled and filtered with the corresponding inverse filters. The result of the last
step is added together and we have the original image again. Note that there is no
loss of information when the image is decomposed and then composed again at full
precision.

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 Figure 8.3 One composition step of the four sub images

With DWT we can decompose an image more than once. Decomposition can be
continued until the signal has been entirely decomposed or stopped before by the
application at hand. For compression and watermarking application, generally no
more than five decompositions steps are computed. Mostly we use two ways for
decomposition. These are:
i.) Pyramidal decomposition
ii.) Packet decomposition
8.3. Pyramidal Decomposition
The simplest and most common way is pyramidal decomposition. For the
pyramidal decomposition we only apply further decompositions to the LL sub-
band. Figure 8.4 shows a systematic diagram of three decomposition steps. At each
level the detail sub-bands are the final results and only the approximation sub-band
is further decomposed.

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 Figure 8.4 Three decomposition steps of an image using Pyramidal Decomposition
Figure 8.4 shows the pyramidal structure that results from this decomposition. At
the lowest level there is one approximation sub-band and there are a total of nine
detail sub-bands at the different levels. After L decompositions we have a total of
D(L) = 3 * L + 1 sub-bands.

Figure 8.5 Pyramid after three decomposition steps

Figure 8.6 Pyramidal Decomposition of Lena image(1,2 and 3 times)

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 8.4. Wavelet Packet Decomposition
For the wavelet packet decomposition we do not limit the decomposition to the
approximation sub-band and allow further wavelet decomposition of all sub-bands
on all levels. In figure 8.7 we show the system diagram for a complete two level
wavelet packet decomposition.

Figure 8.7 Two complete decomposition steps using wavelet packet decomposition

In figure 8.8 we show the resulting sub-band structure. We again use the simple
decomposition step as basic building block. The composition step is equal to the
pyramidal case. All four sub-bands on one level are used as input for the inverse
transformation and result in the sub-band on the higher level. This process is
repeated until the original image is reproduced.

Figure 8.8 Sub-band structure after two level packet decomposition.

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 Figure 8.9 Two level packet decomposition of “Lena”

8.5 Wavelet Families

There are a number of basis functions that can be used as the mother wavelet for
Wavelet Transformation. Since the mother wavelet produces all wavelet functions
used in the transformation through translation and scaling, it determines the
characteristics of the resulting Wavelet Transform. Therefore, the details of the
particular application should be taken into account and the appropriate mother
wavelet should be chosen in order to use the Wavelet Transform effectively.

Figure 8.10 illustrates some of the commonly used wavelet functions. Haar wavelet
is one of the oldest and simplest wavelet. Therefore, any discussion of wavelets
starts with the Haar wavelet. Daubechies wavelets are the most popular wavelets.
They represent the foundations of wavelet signal processing and are used in
numerous applications. These are also called Maxflat wavelets as their frequency
responses have maximum flatness at frequencies 0 and π. This is a very desirable
property in some applications. The Haar, Daubechies, Symlets and Coiflets are
compactly supported orthogonal wavelets. These wavelets along with Meyer
wavelets are capable of perfect reconstruction. The Meyer, Morlet and Mexican
Hat wavelets are symmetric in shape. The wavelets are chosen based on their shape
and their ability to analyze the signal in a particular application.

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 Figure8.10 Several different families of wavelets

9. Existing Image Watermarking Techniques

Most watermarking research and publications are focused on images. The
reason might be that there is a large demand for image watermarking products
due to the fact that there are so many images available at no cost on the World
Wide Web, which need to be protected.
Watermarking methods differ only in the part or single aspect of three topics
• Signal design
• Embedding
• Recovery
To insert a watermark we can use spatial domain, frequency domain, wavelet
domain or compression domain.

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9.1. Spatial Domain Techniques
Techniques in spatial domain class generally share the following characteristics:
• The watermark is applied in the pixel domain.
• No transforms are applied to the host signal during watermark embedding.
• Combination with the host signal is based on simple operations, in the pixel
domain.
• The watermark can be detected by correlating the expected pattern with the
received signal.
The main strengths of pixel domain methods are that they are conceptually
simple and have very low computational complexities. However, they also
exhibit a major drawback:
The need for absolute spatial synchronization leads to high susceptibility to de-
synchronization attacks.

Some spatial domain techniques are explained here.

9.1.1. Gray Scale Watermarking Techniques

Tagging Technique: it uses spatial domain for watermark insertion. A tag is a
square of size N * N. In a first step, all possible locations in an image where a
tag could possibly be placed are identified by calculating the local region
variance of size N * N in the image and comparing it to empirically identified
upper and lower limits. Only locations with minimal variance are used for
tagging. A tag is a square with a constant value proportional to the maximum
image brightness within the square and decaying outside the border. A selected
image area is tagged by adding the tag. One selected tag location hides 1 bit and
is only tagged if the bit to embed is set to one. To recover an embedded bit, the

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difference between the original and the tagged image is computed. In addition
to this we can also use the correlation coefficient between the original and the
tagged image as a measure for the image degradation due to the tagging
process. A correlation coefficient of one indicates that the two images are
identical, whereas for distorted images the value decreases toward zero.

Least Significant Bit (LSB) Technique: The most straightforward method of

watermark embedding would be to embed the watermark into the least
significant bits of the cover object. Given the extraordinarily high channel
capacity of using the entire cover for transmission in this method, a smaller
object may be embedded multiple times. Even if most of these are lost due to
attacks, a single surviving watermark would be considered a success.

Image: 11001010 00110101 00011010 00000000 ...

Watermark: 1 1 1 0 ...
Watermarked Image:
11001011 00110101 00011011 00000000 ...

Figure 9.1 Example of least significant bit watermarking

LSB substitution however despite its simplicity brings a host of drawbacks.

Although it may survive transformations such as cropping, any addition of
noise or lossy compression is likely to defeat the watermark. An even better
attack would be to simply set the LSB bits of each pixel to one fully defeating

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the watermark with negligible impact on the cover object. Furthermore, once
the algorithm is discovered, the embedded watermark could be easily modified
by an intermediate party.

9.1.2. Binary image watermarking

A binary image is a digital image that has only two possible intensity values for
each pixel. The two values are often 0 for black, and either 1 or 255 for white.
In binary image watermarking we embed a binary watermark in binary image.
Usually it is much difficult to embed a watermark in binary image than in gray
scale or colored image. The reason is that for binary image we have only two
bits per pixel. So, change in any bit will change the pixel entirely.
The two basic ways to embed data in binary image are by changing the values
of individual pixels and by changing a group of pixels. The first approach flips
a black pixel to white or vice versa. The second approach modifies such
features as the thickness of strokes, curvature, relative positions, etc. This
approach generally depends more on the types of images (e.g., text, sketches,
etc.). Since the number of parameters that can be changed in this manner is
limited, especially under the requirements of blind detection and invisibility, the
amount of data that can be hidden is usually limited except for special types of
images.
Some of the binary image watermarking techniques are:
A Secure Data Hiding Scheme for Two-Color Images: This technique is better
than previous techniques, because here we can embed more bits in a block. For
instance in an image block of size m by n we can embed log2(mn+1) bits of
data by changing at most 2 bits in the block. To achieve this we use a weight
matrix.

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 Figure 9.2 Watermarking process for two color images

Let input image is F, divide it into m by n blocks. K is the secret key of size m
by n.
We use a weight matrix W and r is number of bits to be inserted in each block.
The algorithm for this technique is
Step 1: Compute Fi ⊕ K.
Step 2: Compute SUM((Fi ⊕ K ) ⊗ W).
Step 3: From the matrix Fj ⊕ K, compute for each w = 1..2r - 1
the following set:

Intuitively, Sw is the set containing every matrix index ( j, k) such that if we

complement [Fi]j,k, we can increase the sum in step 2 by w. There are actually
two possibilities to achieve this: (i) if [W]j,k = w and [Fi ⊕ K ]j,k = 0, then
complementing [Fi]j,k will increase the weight by w. and (ii) if [W]j,k = (2r
– w) and [Fi ⊕ K ]j,k = 1, then complementing [Fi]j,k will decrease the weight
by (2r – w), or equivalently increase the sum by w (under mod 2r).

9.2. Wavelet Watermarking

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Most of the researchers focus on embedding watermark in wavelet domain
because watermarks in this domain are very robust. The existing wavelet based
watermarking techniques are explained below:
Xia, Boncelet, and Arce proposed a watermarking scheme based on the
Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT). The watermark, modeled as Gaussian
noise, was added to the middle and high frequency bands of the image. The
decoding process involved taking the DWT of a potentially marked image.
Sections of the watermark were extracted and correlated with sections of the
original watermark. If the cross-correlation was above a threshold, then the
watermark was detected. Otherwise, the image was decomposed into finer and
finer bands until the entire, extracted watermark was correlated with the entire,
original watermark. This technique proved to be more robust than the DCT
method.
Improvements on the above schemes were possible by utilizing properties of the
Human Visual System.
Kundur and Hatzinakos (1997) present image fusion watermarking technique.
They use salient features of the image to embed the watermark. They use a
saliency measure to identify the watermark strength and later embed the
watermark additively. Normalized correlation is used to evaluate the robustness
of the extracted watermark. Later the authors propose another technique termed
as FuseMark , which includes minimum variance fusion for watermark
extraction. Here they propose to use a watermark image whose size is a factor
of the host by 2xy.

10. Algorithms of Watermarking

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10.1. Implementation details
In this report we are giving a new image watermarking method. This method
increases the security and capacity of robust watermark. To increase
capacity the concept of nesting is used. Means we embed one watermark in
other. And to increase security of watermark cryptography is used. It is a
blind watermarking method. Means original image is not required at the time
of watermark recovery.
For embedding first watermark in second we use spatial domain technique,
because it is less time consuming as compare to wavelet or frequency
domain techniques. Spatial domain techniques are less robust. But
robustness is much more important issue to be consider for second
watermark, because both unintentional and malicious attacks alter the final
watermarked image, which directly affect the second watermark. So for
embedding second watermark we used technique based on DWT, which is
very robust against attacks.
Before embedding watermarks at both levels we encrypt them with XOR
operation. XOR operation has one important property: if we XOR the data
twice with same key we get original data again. This property of XOR is
used for encryption and decryption. For encryption we XOR the binary
image with some key. For decryption we XOR the encrypted image with
same key, it gives the original image.

10.1.1. Watermark Embedding Algorithm

Input
Watermark1 – a binary image act as a watermark that we embed in the main
watermark.
Watermark2 – a binary image act as main watermark.

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Cover Image – gray scale image to be watermarked.
E1 – key used for encrypting Watermark1
E2 – key used to encrypt watermarked watermark.
W1 – key used to embed encrypted binary watermark into the main
watermark.
W2 – key used to embed encrypted watermarked watermark in Cover Image

Algorithm
1.) We take Watermark1 and encrypt it by performing XOR operation with
the key E1. The output of this step is called Encrypted1.
2.) Apply procedure proposed in section 10.1.4 to embed Encrypted1 in the
second binary watermark image (Watermark2) using key W1. Let output
image is Watermarked1.
3.) Again encrypt Watermarked1 using XOR with key E2 to give the output
image Encrypted2.
4.) Apply procedure given in section 10.1.6 to embed Encrypted2 in the
gray-scale Cover Image using key W2. Output image is final watermarked
image (Watermarked2).
Output
Watermarked2 – finally watermarked image

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 Figure 10.1 Block Diagram of Purposed Watermarks Embedding Procedure

10.1.2. Watermarks Extraction Algorithm

Inputs

Watermarked2′ – it is the received watermarked image.

S1 – size of watermark1.

S2 – size of watermark2.

E2 – key used to decrypt Recovered watermark from cover Image.

E1 – key used for decrypting Recovered Watermark from main watermark.

W2 – key used to recover encrypted watermarked watermark from Cover Image.

W1 – key used to recover encrypted binary watermark from the main watermark.

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Algorithm

1.) Apply procedure proposed in section 10.1.7 to extract encrypted watermark2

from Watermarked2 using key W2. Say the recovered image is Encrypted2′.

2.) Decrypt Encrypted2′ using XOR with key E2.output of this step is called
Recovered2.

3.) Apply procedure proposed in section 10.1.5 to extract encrypted watermark1

from Recovered2 using key W1. Recovered image is called Encrypted1′.

4.) Decrypt Encrypted1’ using XOR with key E1. Output of this step is called
Recovered1.

Figure 10.2 Block Diagram of Purposed Watermarks Extraction Procedure.

Output

Recovered2 – main watermark recovered from the received watermarked image.

Recovered1 – watermark recovered from the main watermark.

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 10.1.3. Embedding Watermark in Binary Image

For embedding watermark in binary image we made some enhancements in the

algorithm given in. This algorithm embed watermark in spatial domain.

Many other algorithms are also there for embedding watermark in binary images,
but we selected this algorithm because with this we can embed large number of
bits in the binary image.

In this technique we use weight matrix to improve the embedding capacity. Give
an image block of size m x n this scheme can hide as many as log2(mn+1) bits of
data in the image by changing at most 2 bits in the image.

In the algorithm given in we have to give the size of image block and the number
of bits to be inserted in each block. But our scheme automatically calculates the
optimal size of block and the optimal number of bits to be inserted in each block in
such way so as to minimize the distortion in image.

10.1.4. Algorithm for embedding Watermark in binary image

Input

Watermark – binary image watermark to be inserted.

Binary Cover – binary image to be watermarked

K – key for embedding watermark.

Algorithm

1.) Find value of m, n, r.

Where m and n are image block dimensions and r is the number of bits to be
inserted in each block.
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2.) Calculate Weight matrix W of size m x n.

3.) Calculate key K1 of size m x n from K.

4.) Divide the image into m x n blocks.

5.) For each block of image say Bi perform the following steps:

(i) Take r bits of the watermark and convert them in decimal and then store in d.

(ii) Calculate Bi ⊕ K1.

(iii) Compute M = (Bi ⊕ K1) ⊗ W

Where ⊗ means multiply each element of first matrix with corresponding element
of the second matrix.

(iv) Add all the elements of M, i.e. , S = SUM (M)

(v) Compute SM = S Mod 2r.

(vi) Find difference between d and SM i.e.

(vii) diff = d – SM

(viii) If (diff = 0) then

No need to alter bits in the block.

Else if (diff > 0) then

Increase total weight of the block by diff. or decrease weight by (2r – diff) by
complementing one or two bits. For increasing weight by the value of an element
in W, the corresponding value in (Bi ⊕ K1) should be zero. For decreasing weight
by the value of an element in W, the corresponding value in (Bi ⊕ K1) should be

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one. Else if (diff<0) then Decrease weight by absolute value of diff or increase
weight by (2r – absolute value of diff) by complementing one or 2 bits.

Output

Watermarked Image – it is a binary watermarked image.

Example: Let F is the Cover binary image, K is key and W is the weight matrix.

Let watermark = 001010000001, let Wi is the weight of each block in F.

Diagram 10.3 shows how we can embed 3 bits in each block.

W1 = 0 and the first three bit are 001 (equivalent to (1)10 ). So, we have to
increase the weight of first block by 1.the changed bit is shown in shaded area.

W2 = 2 and the next three bits are 010 (equivalent to (2)10). Since difference is 0,
so no need to change any bit in the second block.

W3 = 2 and the next three bits are 000 (equivalent to (0)10 ). So we can either
increase weight by 6 or decrease weight by 2.here we increased weight by 6 by
complementing the last bit.

W4 = 4 and the bits to be inserted are 001 (equivalent to (1)10 ).in this case we
changed two bits to increase the weight by 5.

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 Figure 10.3 Example of embedding binary watermark in a binary image

10.1.5. Algorithm for Extracting Watermark from Binary Image

Input

Watermarked Cover – it is the watermarked cover image from which we want to

extract the watermark.

S0 – size of the original watermark.

K – key for watermark extraction.

Algorithm

1.) Create a matrix Recovered of size So and initialize it with all Zeros.

2.) set I = 1.

3.) Find value of m, n and r.

Where m and n are block dimensions and r is the number of bits inserted in each
block.

4.) Calculate Weight matrix W of size m x n.

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5.) Calculate key K1 of size m x n from K.

6.) Divide the image into m x n blocks.

7.) For each block of image say Bi perform the following steps:

(i) Calculate Bi ⊕ K1.

(ii) Compute M = (Bi ⊕ K1) ⊗ W

Where ⊗ means multiply each element of first matrix with corresponding element
of the second matrix.

(iii) Add all the elements of M i.e. S = SUM (M)

(iv) Compute SM = S Mod 2r.

(v) Convert SM into binary form and store in SB.

(vi) Assign MSB of SB to Ith position of matrix Recovered, Second bit to (I+1)th
position, third bit to (I+2)th position and so on upto LSB of SB.

(vii) Set I = I + r.

Output

Recovered – it is the extracted binary watermark from binary image.

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 10.1.6. Algorithm for Embedding Watermark in Gray-Scale Image

Input

Cover Image – it is a gray-scale image to be watermarked.

Watermark Image – it is a binary image act as watermark.

Key –numeric key used for watermark embedding.

Algorithm

1.) Perform DWT decomposition of the Cover Image at level one. And store

Approximation, horizontal, vertical and diagonal coefficients in A1, H1, V1, D1

respectively.

2.) Find the size of H1 matrix and store it in Sh .

3.) Initialize the state of Random number generator to Key.

4.) For each bit of watermark perform the following steps:

(i) Create a random matrix of size Sh with random number generator and store it
in RH.

(ii) Calculate RH1 = round(2*(RH – 0.5)).

(iii) Create a random matrix of size Sh with random number generator and store it

in RV.

(iv) Calculate RV1 = round(2*(RV – 0.5)).

(v) If bit at current position in watermark has value Zero, then

set H1 = H1 + k * RH1.
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set V1 = V1 + k * RV1.

5.) Perform Inverse Discrete Wavelet Transform (IDWT), to create the

watermarked image.

Output

Watermarked Image – it is a gray-scale image watermarked with binary image.

10.1.7. Algorithm for Extracting watermark from Gray-Scale Image

Input

So – size of original binary watermark

Key – key for watermark extraction

Algorithm

1.) Perform DWT decomposition of the Watermarked Binary Image at level one.
And store Approximation, horizontal, vertical and diagonal coefficients in A1, H1,
V1, and D1 respectively.

2.) Find the size of H1 matrix and store it in Sh .

3.) Initialize the state of Random number generator to Key.

4.) Find number of bits in the watermark and store in N.

5.) Create a matrix with one row and N columns with all ones and store in variable
Watermark.

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6.) Repeat the following for kk = 1 to N

(i) Create a random matrix of size Sh with random number generator and store it in
RH.

(ii) Calculate RH1 = round(2*(RH – 0.5)).

(iii) Create a random matrix of size Sh with random number generator and store it
in RV.

(iv) Calculate RV1 = round(2*(RV – 0.5)).

(v) Find the correlation between H1 and RH1 and store it in corr_h(kk).

(vi) Find the correlation between V1 and RV1 and store it in corr_v(kk).

(vii) Calculate

corr(kk) = (corr_h(kk) + corr_v(kk)) / 2

7.) Find mean corr and store it in mean_corr.

8.) Repeat the following for kk = 1 to N

if (corr(kk) > mean_corr)

Set Watermark(kk) = 0

9.) Reshape the Watermark in size So.

Output

Watermark – it is the recovered binary watermark.

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11. Experimental Results:

In our experiment we embedded an input binary matrix using nested watermarking

And then we recovered it back
The input data is
in=[1 0 0 0 1 1;
1 0 0 0 1 1;
0 1 1 0 1 0;
1 1 0 1 0 1;
0 1 0 0 1 0;
1 1 0 0 1 1;
1 1 1 0 0 0;
1 1 0 1 0 1]

Original image watermarked image

PSNR =7.06 dB

Difference image

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The data recovered after de watermarking is :
out=[1 0 0 0 1 1;
1 0 0 0 1 1;
0 1 1 0 1 0;
1 1 0 1 0 1;
0 1 0 0 1 0;
1 1 0 0 1 1;
1 1 1 0 0 0;
1 1 0 1 0 1]

We measure the quality of watermarked images in terms of PSNR (Peak Signal to

Noise Ratio). In ideal case PSNR should be infinite. But it is not possible for
watermarked image. So, large PSNR is desirable.
We also calculated the PSNR values of the watermarked image and compared it
with the various PSNR values of noisy versions of original image.
The results obtained show that the PSNR values are comparable indicating that the
channel or any opponent in the network will not be able to differentiate between
watermarked and noisy image.

Gaussian noisy image Poisson noisy image

PSNR =9.18 dB PSNR=16.35 dB

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 Speckle noisy image
PSNR =9.84 Db

12. Applications of Watermarking

Digital watermarking techniques have wide ranging applications. Some of the

applications are enlisted below.

Copyright Protection: Digital watermarks can be used to identify and protect

copyright ownership. Digital content can be embedded with watermarks depicting
metadata identifying the copyright owners.

Copy Protection: Digital content can be watermarked to indicate that the content
cannot be illegally replicated. Devices capable of replication can then detect such
watermarks and prevent unauthorized replication of the content.

Tracking: Digital watermarks can be used to track the usage of digital content.
Each copy of digital content can be uniquely watermarked with metadata
specifying the authorized users of the content. Such watermarks can be used to
detect illegal replication of content by identifying the users who replicated the
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content illegally. The watermarking technique used for tracking is called as
fingerprinting.

Tamper Proofing: Digital watermarks, which are fragile in nature, can be used for
tamper proofing. Digital content can be embedded with fragile watermarks that get
destroyed whenever any sort of modification is made to the content. Such
watermarks can be used to authenticate the content. The goal of this application is
to detect alterations and modifications in a document.

Broadcast Monitoring: By embedding watermarks into commercial advertisements,

the advertisements can be monitored whether the advertisements are broadcasted at
the correct instants by means of an automated system. The system receives the
broadcast and searches these watermarks identifying where and when the
advertisement is broadcasted. The same process can also be used for video and
sound clips.

Covert Communication: Covert communication is another possible application of

digital watermarking. The watermark, secret message, can be embedded
imperceptibly to the digital image or video to communicate information from the
sender to the intended receiver while maintaining low probability of intercept by
other unintended receivers.

Identity Card / Passport Security: Information in a passport or ID card can also be

included in the person’s photo that appears on the ID card. Extracting the
embedded information and comparing it to the written text can verify the ID card.
The inclusion of the watermark provides an additional level of security in this
application. For example if ID card is stolen and the person replaces the picture,
the failure in extracting the watermark will invalidate the ID card.

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Medical Safety: Embedding the data and patient’s name in medical image could
increase the confidently of medical information as well as the security.

13. Conclusions

This project presents a blind watermarking technique that uses watermark nesting
(at level 2) and encryption. Nesting means it embeds an extra watermark into the
main watermark and then embeds the main watermark into the cover image. For
encryption we used XOR operation. For embedding watermarked watermark in
Cover Image we used DWT based technique.
Proposed watermarking technique has following advantages:
1. By using watermark nesting we can embed more number of bits in the cover
image as compare to without watermark nesting.
2. Due to nesting feature we can embed some metadata about watermark also.
3. Because our technique uses encryption, so it increases the security of
watermarks. For instance if watermarking key is hacked still the attacker will not
be able to identify the watermark because it is encrypted.
4.It is a blind watermarking technique. So, original image is not required at the
time of watermark recovery.
5. Because we embed final watermark in DWT domain, so this technique is robust
against many attacks.

13. 1 Summary of Contributions

In this project a new watermarking technique is given that uses watermark nesting
and encryption.
First we embedded a binary image watermark in other binary image watermark
using algorithm described in, but with some enhancements. Our scheme
automatically finds the optimal size of each block of image to be processed and the

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optimal number of bits to 56 be inserted in each block in such a way so as to
minimize the distortion in main watermark. But in we have to give it manually the
number of bits and block size. Then we embedded this watermarked watermark in
gray-scale cover image using DWT based technique. By hiding watermark in
watermark we can embed more number of bits in the cover image as compare to
without watermark nesting.
Before embedding we encrypted both the watermarks with exclusive OR (XOR)
operation. This provides an additional level of security for watermarks. For
instance if watermarking key is hacked still the attacker will not be able to identify
the watermark because it is encrypted.

14. Future Scope of Work

Watermarking is an emerging research area for copyright protection and
authentication of electronic documents and media. Most of the research is going on
in this field, Spatially in the field of image watermarking. The reason might be that
there are so many images available at Internet without any cost, which needs to be
protected.
The watermarking technique that is given in this project can be further improved to
increase the hiding capacity of images without affecting the imperceptibility of the
images.
The other future scope is that our technique can be enhanced to embed colored
nested watermark in colored image.
Because in this technique we used encryption that is based on XOR operation, so,
further work can be done to find some other encryption technique to increase the
security of watermarks.

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15. References

Aboofazeli, M., Thomas, G., Moussavi, Z.,”A wavelet transform based digital
image watermarking scheme”, in IEEE Canadian Conference on Electrical and
Computer Engineering, Vol. 2, pp. 823 – 826, May 2004.

Amara Graps, “An Introduction to Wavelets”, in IEEE Computer Science and

Engineering, vol.2, pp.50-59, 1995.

A. Nikolaidis, S. Tsekeridou, A. Tefas, V Solachidis, “A survey on watermarking

application scenarios and related attacks”, IEEE international Conference on Image
Processing, Vol. 3, pp. 991– 993, Oct. 2001.

Rafel C.Gonzalez and Richard E.Woods, ” Digital image processing “ second

edition, pp.349-394.

Internet Links

A. K. Vanwasi, “Digital Watermarking - Steering the future of security” Edition

2001, available at http://www.networkmagazineindia.com/200108/security1.html

“DIGITAL WATERMARK” available at

http://www.ncd.matf.bg.ac.yu/casopis/05/Vuckovic/Vuckovic.pdf

“A Wavelet Watermarking Algorithm” available at

http://www.scribd.com/doc/56469537/Wavelet-Based-Watermarking

“Digital Watermarking” available at

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_watermarking

“Fundamentals of Wavelets” available at

http://documents.wolfram.com/applications/wavelet/index2.html

“MATLAB - The Language of Technical Computing” available at

http://www.mathworks.com/access/helpdesk/help/pdf_doc/matlab/getstart.pdf

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