PERTANIKA JOURNAL OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

 

e-ISSN 2231-8526
ISSN 0128-7680

Home / Regular Issue / JST Vol. 30 (3) Jul. 2022 / JST-3287-2021

 

DFT-Based Reversible Watermarking Method for Image Ownership Protection

Ansam Osamah Abdulmajeed and Sundus Abdulmuttalib Mohamed

Pertanika Journal of Science & Technology, Volume 30, Issue 3, July 2022

DOI: https://doi.org/10.47836/pjst.30.3.07

Keywords: Bit plane, DC coefficient, digital watermarking, discrete Fourier transform, Feynman gate, reversible watermarking

Published on: 25 May 2022

The Performance of Discrete Fourier Transform (DFT)-based watermarking methods has been carefully examined in the literature. Although the watermark in most of the literature was embedded in the DFT magnitudes using bit plane embedding, it was recently embedded in the Direct Current (DC) coefficient in the spatial domain. However, data loss due to rounding and replacement operations are still evident. Therefore, the objective of the method proposed here was to combine previous literature designs to implement a reversible DFT-based watermarking method for image ownership protection using bit plane embedding in the DC coefficient. The watermark was embedded in a middle bit plane of the DC coefficient for each DFT-transformed image block. In order to ensure reversibility and improve the security level, a combination of double Feynman and XOR gates was used to shuffle the watermark bits. The results revealed that the 8th (PSNR/SSIM = 32dB/0.8826), the 9th (PSNR/SSIM = 38dB/0.0.9587), and the 10th (PSNR/SSIM = 44dB/0.9917) bit planes for block sizes of 4×4, 8×8, and 16×16, respectively, were the best bit planes showing good imperceptibility and resistance to compression, filtering, and noise attacks. In conclusion, embedding the DC coefficients rather than all the magnitudes has influentially increased the watermarking robustness. In contrast, embedding the DC coefficients in the frequency domain rather than the spatial domain reduced the image’s structural contents distortion. Furthermore, the proposed method for grayscale images is effective in applications where reversibility is desired. However, further studies to find colored images’ reversible methods are recommended.

  • Ahmed, F., & Moskowitz, I. S. (2004). Correlation-based watermarking method for image authentication applications. Optical Engineering, 43(8), 1833-1838. https://doi.org/10.1117/1.1763589

  • Ahmed, F., & Moskowitz, I. S. (2006). A semi-reversible watermark for medical image authentication. In 1st Transdisciplinary Conference on Distributed Diagnosis and Home Healthcare (pp. 59-62). IEEE Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1109/DDHH.2006.1624797

  • Ansari, A., Hong, S., Saavedra, G., Javidi, B., & Martinez-Corral, M. (2018). Ownership protection of plenoptic images by robust and reversible watermarking. Optics and Lasers in Engineering, 107, 325-334. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.optlaseng.2018.03.028

  • Begum, M., & Uddin, M. S. (2021). Implementation of secured and robust DFT-based image watermark through hybridization with decomposition algorithm. SN Computer Science, 2, Article 221. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42979-021-00608-6

  • Feng, B., Li, X., Jie, Y., Guo, C., & Fu, H. (2019). A novel semi-fragile digital watermarking scheme for scrambled image authentication and restoration. Mobile Networks and Applications, 25, 82-94. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11036-018-1186-9

  • Jimson, N., & Hemachandran, K. (2018). DFT based digital image watermarking: A survey. International Journal of Advanced Research in Computer Science, 9(2), 540-544. https://doi.org/10.26483/ijarcs.v9i2.5747

  • Khalilidan, S., Mahdavi, M., Balouchestani, A., Moti, Z., & Hallaj, Y. (2020) A semi-blind watermarking method for authentication of face images using autoencoders. In 2020 6th International Conference on Web Research (ICWR) (pp. 229-233). IEEE Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1109/ICWR49608.2020.9122276

  • Krishna, K. B., & Ramesh, A. P. (2019). Implementation of sequential circuit using feynman and fredkin reversible logic gates. In Journal of Physics: Conference Series (Vol. 1228, No. 1, p. 012047). IOP Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1088/1742-6596/1228/1/012047

  • Luo, Y., Li, L., Liu, J., Tang, S., Cao, L., Zhang, S., Qiu, S., & Cao, Y. (2021). A multi-scale image watermarking based on integer wavelet transform and singular value decomposition. Expert Systems with Applications, 168, Article 114272. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eswa.2020.114272

  • Menendez-Ortiz, A., Feregrino-Uribe, C., Hasimoto-Beltran R., & Garcia-Hernandez, J. J. (2019). A survey on reversible watermarking for multimedia content: A robustness overview. IEEE Access, 7, 132662-132681. https://doi.org/10.1109/ACCESS.2019.2940972

  • Qasim, A. F, Meziane, F., & Aspin, R. (2018). Digital watermarking: Applicability for developing trust in medical imaging workflows state of the art review. Computer Science Review, 27, 45-60. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cosrev.2017.11.003

  • Setiadi, D. R. I. (2021). PSNR vs SSIM: Imperceptibility quality assessment for image steganography. Multimedia Tools and Applications, 80, 8423-8444. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-020-10035-z

  • Su, Q., Liu D., Yuan, Z., Wang, G., Zhang, X., Chen, B., & Yao, T. (2019). New rapid and robust color image watermarking technique in spatial domain. IEEE Access, 7, 30398-30409. https://doi.org/10.1109/ACCESS.2019.2895062

  • Zhang, X., Su, Q., Yuan Z., & Liu, D. (2020). An efficient blind color image watermarking algorithm in spatial domain combining discrete Fourier transform. Optik, 219, Article 165272. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijleo.2020.165272

  • Zhu, X., Wu, J., & Sang, J. (2007). On the fragility of the binary phase-only filter based digital image watermarking. In MIPPR 2007: Remote Sensing and GIS Data Processing and Applications; and Innovative Multispectral Technology and Applications (Vol. 6790, pp. 1367-1372). SPIE Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1117/12.751141.

ISSN 0128-7680

e-ISSN 2231-8526

Article ID

JST-3287-2021

Download Full Article PDF

Share this article

Recent Articles