Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Robust image watermarking scheme using bit-plane of hadamard coefficients

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

Abstract

Nowadays, due to widespread usage of the Internet, digital contents are distributed quickly and inexpensively throughout the world. Watermarking techniques can help protect authenticity of digital contents by identifying their owners. In a watermarking procedure, owner information may be embedded in the spatial domain or transform domain of host images. Since watermarking algorithms must be tamper resistant and transparent, we present a watermarking method based on a transform domain. In this method, we employ Hadamard transform as it requires simpler operations compared to other transforms such as discrete cosine transform (DCT) and discrete wavelet transform (DWT) while it still attains robustness. We analyze each bit of the Hadamard’s coefficients in terms of robustness and transparency for hiding the watermark information and find a bit-plane that maintains both robustness and transparency. After that, watermark information is hidden redundantly in the selected bit-plane. The proposed extraction algorithm is classified as a blind algorithm since it extracts all versions of the concealed watermark with no information from the host image. The output of the extraction algorithm is a logo obtained by an intelligent voting among all versions of the hidden logo. The experimental results show that the proposed method, while providing transparency, is robust against many image processing attacks such as compression, image cropping and Gaussian filtering.

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.

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5
Fig. 6
Fig. 7

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. Aung A, Ng BP, Rahardja S (2008) Sequency-ordered complex hadamard transform: Properties, computational complexity and applications. IEEE Trans Signal Process 56(8):3562–3571

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  2. Aung A, Ng BP, Rahardja S (2011) A robust watermarking scheme using sequency-ordered complex hadamard transform. Journal of Signal Processing Systems 64(3):319–333

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Botta M, Cavagnino D, Pomponiu V (2014) Fragile watermarking using Karhunen–Loève transform: the KLT-F approach, Soft Comput, 1–15

  4. Cheddad A, Condell J, Curran K, Mc Kevitt P (2010) Digital image steganography: Survey and analysis of current methods. Signal Process 90(3):727–752

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  5. Cox I, Miller M, Bloom J, Fridrich J, Kalker T (2007) Digital watermarking and steganography Morgan Kaufmann

  6. Fami ES, Samavi S, Kaviani HR, Radani ZM (2012) Adaptive watermarking in hadamard transform coefficients of textured image blocks, International Symposium on Artificial Intelligence and Signal Processing (AISP), 503–507, IEEE

  7. Fazlali H, Samavi S, Karimi N, Shirani S (2016) Adaptive blind image watermarking using edge pixel concentration, Multimedia Tools and Applications, 1–16

  8. Feng B, Lu W, Sun W, Huang J, Shi YQ (2016) Robust image watermarking based on tucker decomposition and adaptive-lattice quantization index modulation. Signal Process Image Commun 41:1–14

    Article  Google Scholar 

  9. Franklin RV, GRS M, Santhi V et al (2011) Entropy based robust watermarking scheme using hadamard transformation technique. Int J Comput Appl 12(9):14–21

    Google Scholar 

  10. Ghosh S, Talapatra S, Chakraborty S, Chatterjee N, Rahaman H, Maity SP (2012) Vlsi architecture for spread spectrum image watermarking in walsh-hadamard transform domain using binary watermark, International Conference on Computer and Communication Technology (ICCCT), 233–238, IEEE

  11. Hamghalam M, Mirzakuchaki S, Akhaee MA (2014) Geometric modelling of the wavelet coefficients for image watermarking using optimum detector. IET Image Process 8(3):162–172

    Article  Google Scholar 

  12. Ho AT, Shen J, Tan SH (2003) Robust digital image-in-image watermarking algorithm using the fast hadamard transform, International symposium on optical science and technology, pp. 76–85. International Society for Optics and Photonics

  13. Hu HT, Hsu LY (2016) Collective blind image watermarking in dwt-dct domain with adaptive embedding strength governed by quality metrics, Multimedia Tools and Applications, 1–20

  14. Hua G, Xiang Y, Bi G (2016) When compressive sensing meets data hiding. IEEE Signal Process Lett 23(4):473–477

    Article  Google Scholar 

  15. Kountchev R, Rubin S, Milanova M, Todorov V, Kountcheva R (2010) Resistant image watermarking in the phases of the complex hadamard transform coefficients, IEEE International Conference on Information Reuse and Integration (IRI), 159–164, IEEE

  16. Liu S, Hennelly BM, Guo C, Sheridan JT (2015) Robustness of double random phase encoding spread-space spread-spectrum watermarking technique. Signal Process 109:345–361

    Article  Google Scholar 

  17. Liu Y, Prabhakaran B, Guo X (2008) A robust spectral approach for blind watermarking of manifold surfaces, Proceedings of the 10th ACM workshop on Multimedia and security, 43–52, ACM

  18. Maity SP, Kundu MK (2010) DHT domain digital watermarking with low loss in image informations. AEU Int J Electron Commun 64(3):243–257

    Article  Google Scholar 

  19. Maity SP, Kundu MK (2011) Perceptually adaptive spread transform image watermarking scheme using hadamard transform. Inf Sci 181(3):450–465

    Article  Google Scholar 

  20. Muhammad K, Sajjad M, Baik SW (2016) Dual-level security based cyclic18 steganographic method and its application for secure transmission of keyframes during wireless capsule endoscopy. J Med Syst 40(5):1–16

    Article  Google Scholar 

  21. Muhammad K, Sajjad M, Mehmood I, Rho S, Baik SW (2015) A novel magic lsb substitution method (m-lsb-sm) using multi-level encryption and achromatic component of an image, Multimedia Tools and Applications, 1–27

  22. Pakdaman Z, Saryazdi S, Nezamabadi-pour H (2013) A reversible image watermarking in hadamard domain, Information and Knowledge Technology (IKT) Conference, 447–452, IEEE

  23. Sarker MIH, Khan MI (2013) An efficient image watermarking scheme using BFS technique based on hadamard transform. SmartCR 3(5):298–308

    Article  Google Scholar 

  24. Tsai MJ, Yin JS, Yuadi I (2014) Tree group based wavelet watermarking using energy modulation and consistency check (WW-EMCC) for digital images, Multimedia Tools and Applications, 1–23

  25. Tsougenis E, Papakostas GA, Koulouriotis DE (2015) Image watermarking via separable moments. Multimedia tools and applications 74(11):3985–4012

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  26. Wang Z, Bovik AC, Sheikh HR, Simoncelli EP (2004) Image quality assessment: from error visibility to structural similarity. IEEE Trans Image Process 13 (4):600–612

    Article  Google Scholar 

  27. Zhang Y, Lu ZM, Zhao DN (2010) A blind image watermarking scheme using fast hadamard transform. Inf Technol J 9(7):1369–1375

    Article  Google Scholar 

  28. Zhang Y, Wu J, Shu H (2010) Robust watermarking using conjugate symmetric sequency-ordered complex hadamard transform and norMalization, International Congress on Image and Signal Processing (CISP), 3, 1176–1180, IEEE

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science, Dalhousie University, Halifax, NS, Canada

    Elham Etemad & Mohammad Etemad

  2. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Isfahan University of Technology, Isfahan, 84156-83111, Iran

    Shadrokh Samavi & Nader Karimi

  3. University of Michigan Center for Integrative Research in Critical Care (MCIRCC), University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA

    S. M. Reza Soroushmehr & Kayvan Najarian

  4. ECE Department, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, Canada

    Shadrokh Samavi & Shahram Shirani

Authors
  1. Elham Etemad
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Shadrokh Samavi
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. S. M. Reza Soroushmehr
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Nader Karimi
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  5. Mohammad Etemad
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  6. Shahram Shirani
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  7. Kayvan Najarian
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to S. M. Reza Soroushmehr.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Etemad, E., Samavi, S., Reza Soroushmehr, S.M. et al. Robust image watermarking scheme using bit-plane of hadamard coefficients. Multimed Tools Appl 77, 2033–2055 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-016-4278-1

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Revised:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-016-4278-1

Keywords

Search

Navigation