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Reversible image watermarking algorithm based on reverse histogram translation

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Abstract

Medical, military and other fields need high degrees of security and privacy for images. Aiming at the problems of low embedding rate and low visual quality of the traditional reversible image watermarking based on histogram translation, a new reversible watermarking algorithm based on reverse histogram translation is proposed to further improve the embedding capacity and visual quality. A reversible image watermarking algorithm based on reverse histogram translation is proposed. Firstly, the embedded watermark information is scrambled. Then, after embedding the watermark through histogram translation, the inverse histogram transform is used to embed the watermark information for the second time. In order to further improve the reversible watermark embedding capacity, the peak value and secondary peak value in the histogram can be used to embed the watermark by reverse histogram translation. The experimental result shows that compared with different carrier images and similar algorithms, this method has better visual effects and less distortion at the same embedding rate, and the extracted image does not have any pixel difference from the original image. In addition, using this method to embed watermark, the watermark embedding capacity is improved on the premise of ensuring a certain visual quality.

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Data availability

In this paper, all study images were derived from http://sipi.usc.edu/database. These images can be used under the public platform.

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Acknowledgements

This work is supported by National Statistical Science Research Project (2018LY12).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Computer and Software Engineering, Huaiyin Institute of Technology, Huai’an, 223003, Jiangsu, China

    Zhengwei Zhang, Fenfen Li, Xingyuan Zuo, Qian Meng & Shenghua Jin

Authors
  1. Zhengwei Zhang
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  2. Fenfen Li
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  3. Xingyuan Zuo
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  4. Qian Meng
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  5. Shenghua Jin
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Contributions

Conceptualization: Zhengwei Zhang.

Data curation: Zhengwei Zhang, Fenfen Li, Xingyuan Zuo.

Formal analysis: Fenfen Li, Qian Meng, Shenghua Jin.

Funding acquisition: Zhengwei Zhang.

Investigation: Zhengwei Zhang, Fenfen Li, Shenghua Jin.

Resources: Xingyuan Zuo, Zhengwei Zhang, Qian Meng.

Validation: Zhengwei Zhang.

Writing – original draft: Zhengwei Zhang, Qian Meng, Shenghua Jin.

Writing – review & editing: Zhengwei Zhang, Fenfen Li.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Zhengwei Zhang.

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Zhang, Z., Li, F., Zuo, X. et al. Reversible image watermarking algorithm based on reverse histogram translation. Multimed Tools Appl 82, 11005–11019 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-022-13770-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-022-13770-7

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