Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Adaptive blind image watermarking using edge pixel concentration

  • Published:
Multimedia Tools and Applications Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

In recent years many methods for image watermarking have been proposed to overcome the growing concern of copyright protection. The goal of all these methods is to satisfy the tradeoff between two important characteristics of robustness and imperceptibility. In this paper an adaptive blind watermarking method in the Contourlet transform domain is proposed. In this method we apply a two-level Contourlet transform on the original image. The first level approximate image is partitioned into blocks. Using a novel edge detection algorithm, important edges of each block of the approximate image are detected and the entropy of each block is also computed. Then by concatenating some portions of the second level subbands we form blocks. These formed blocks are transformed into DCT domain. Watermark is embedded by modification of the DCT coefficients. The severity of the embedding is controlled depending on the complexity of the corresponding block in the approximate image. For higher robustness against attacks, we embedded the watermark redundantly and used voting mechanism in extraction stage. Experimental results reveal that our method has high robustness and acceptable imperceptibility.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5
Fig. 6

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. Akhaee MA, Sahraeian SME, Marvasti F (2010) Contourlet-based image watermarking using optimum detector in a noisy environment. IEEE Trans Image Process 19(4):967–980

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  2. Azizi S, Samavi S, Mohrekesh M, Shirani S (2013) Cascaded transform space watermarking based on analysis of local entropy variation. IEEE International Conference on Multimedia and Expo Workshops (ICMEW), 1–6

  3. Cox, Ingemar J, Matthew LM, Jeffrey AB, Honsinger C (2002) Digital watermarking. 53

  4. Ghannam S, Abou-Chadi FE (2009) Enhancing robustness of digital image watermarks using Contourlet transform. 16th IEEE International Conference on In Image Processing (ICIP), 3645–3648

  5. Gonzalez RC, Woods RE (2002) Digital image processing

  6. Hernández-Vela A, Gatta C, Escalera S, Igual L, Martin-Yuste V, Sabaté M, Radeva P (2012) Accurate coronary centerline extraction, caliber estimation, and catheter detection in angiographies. IEEE Trans Inf Technol Biomed 16(6):1332–1340

    Article  Google Scholar 

  7. Horng SJ, Rosiyadi D, Fan P, Wang X, Khan MK (2014) An adaptive watermarking scheme for e-government document images. Multimedia Tool Appl 72(3):3085–3103

    Article  Google Scholar 

  8. Horng SJ, Rosiyadi D, Tianrui L, Takao T, Guo M, Khan MK (2013) A blind image copyright protection scheme for e-government. J Vis Commun Image Represent 24(7):1099–1105

    Article  Google Scholar 

  9. Kaviani HR, Karimi N, Samavi S (2011) Robust watermarking in singular values of contourlet coefficients. Machine Vision and Image Processing (MVIP), 1–5

  10. Kaviani HR, Samavi S, Karimi N, Shirani S (2012) Elevating watermark robustness by data diffusion in Contourlet coefficients. IEEE International Conference on Communications (ICC), 6739–6743

  11. Lai CC, Tsai CC (2010) Digital image watermarking using discrete wavelet transform and singular value decomposition. IEEE Trans Instrum Meas 59(11):3060–3063

    Article  Google Scholar 

  12. Lin WH, Horng SJ, Kao TW, Chen RJ, Chen YH, Lee CL, Terano T (2009) Image copyright protection with forward error correction. Expert Syst Appl 36(9):11888–11894

    Article  Google Scholar 

  13. Lin WH, Horng SJ, Kao TW, Fan P, Lee CL, Pan Y (2008) An efficient watermarking method based on significant difference of wavelet coefficient quantization. IEEE Trans Multimedia 10(5):746–757

    Article  Google Scholar 

  14. Lin WH, Wang YR, Horng SJ, Kao TW, Pan Y (2009) A blind watermarking method using maximum wavelet coefficient quantization. Expert Syst Appl 36(9):11509–11516

    Article  Google Scholar 

  15. Lin WH, Wang YR, Horng SJ (2009) A wavelet-tree-based watermarking method using distance vector of binary cluster. Expert Syst Appl 36(6):9869–9878

    Article  Google Scholar 

  16. Meerwald P, Andreas U (2001) Survey of wavelet-domain watermarking algorithms. International Society for Optics and Photonics 505–516

  17. Potdar, Vidyasagar M, Song H, Chang E (2005) A survey of digital image watermarking techniques. 3rd IEEE International Conference on In Industrial Informatics, 709–716

  18. Rosiyadi D, Horng SJ, Fan P, Wang X, Khan MK, Pan Y (2012) Copyright protection for e-government document images. MultiMedia, IEEE 19(3):62–73

    Article  Google Scholar 

  19. Solachidis V, Ioannis P (2001) Circularly symmetric watermark embedding in 2-D DFT domain. IEEE Trans Image Process 10(11):1741–1753

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  20. Suhail MA, Obaidat MS (2003) Digital watermarking-based DCT and JPEG model. IEEE Trans Instrum Meas 52(5):1640–1647

    Article  Google Scholar 

  21. Taherinia AH, Jamzad M (2009) A robust spread spectrum watermarking method using two levels DCT. Int J Electron Secur Digit Forensics 2(3):280–305

    Article  Google Scholar 

  22. Wang Y, Doherty JF, Van Dyck RE (2002) A wavelet-based watermarking algorithm for ownership verification of digital images. IEEE Trans Image Process 11(2):77–88

    Article  Google Scholar 

  23. Xinbo G, Deng C, Li X, Tao D (2010) Geometric distortion insensitive image watermarking in affine covariant regions. IEEE Trans Syst Man Cybern 40(3):278–286

    Article  Google Scholar 

  24. Zhang H, Shu H, Coatrieux G, Zhu J, Wu QJ, Zhang Y, Zhu H, Luo L (2011) Affine Legendre moment invariants for image watermarking robust to geometric distortions. IEEE Trans Image Process 20(8):2189–2199

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  25. Zong T, Xiang Y, Natgunanathan I, Guo S, Zhou W, Beliakov G (2014) Robust histogram shape based method for image watermarking. IEEE Trans Circut and Syst for Video Tech 25(5):717–729

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Isfahan University of Technology, Isfahan, Iran

    H. R. Fazlali & N. Karimi

  2. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, McMaster University, Hamilton, Canada

    S. Samavi & S. Shirani

Authors
  1. H. R. Fazlali
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. S. Samavi
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. N. Karimi
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. S. Shirani
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to S. Samavi.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Fazlali, H.R., Samavi, S., Karimi, N. et al. Adaptive blind image watermarking using edge pixel concentration. Multimed Tools Appl 76, 3105–3120 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-015-3200-6

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Revised:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-015-3200-6

Keywords

Search

Navigation