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Robust and blind watermarking algorithm based on DCT and SVD in the contourlet domain

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Abstract

A blind watermarking algorithm in multiple transform domains is presented for copyright protection. This robust algorithm is designed by fusing contourlet transform (CT), discrete cosine transform (DCT) and singular value decomposition (SVD). The host image is first decomposed by one-level CT and its low frequency sub-band is partitioned into 8 × 8 non-overlapping blocks. Then, each block is transformed by DCT and several middle frequency DCT coefficients with good stability are selected to construct the carrier matrix. Finally, the watermark is embedded by modifying the largest singular values of two carrier matrices. Besides, the geometric distortion factor is estimated with the speed up robust features (SURF) algorithm. The proposed watermarking scheme is evaluated in terms of imperceptibility and robustness. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed watermarking scheme preforms better in terms of invisibility and robustness than other related schemes.

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Acknowledgements

This work is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 61861029 and 61462061), the Department of Human Resources and Social security of Jiangxi Province, the Major Academic Discipline and Technical Leader of Jiangxi Province (Grant No.20162BCB22011), the Natural Science Foundation of Jiangxi Province (Grant No.2017BAB202002), and the Cultivation Plan of Applied Research of Jiangxi Province (Grant No. 20181BBE58022).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Electronic Information Engineering, Nanchang University, Nanchang, 330031, China

    Cheng Tian, Wei-Ping Zou & Li-Hua Gong

  2. College of Physical Science and Technology, Yichun University, Yichun, 336000, China

    Ru-Hong Wen

  3. XLIM (UMR CNRS 7252), University of Poitiers, Poitiers, France

    Wei-Ping Zou

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  1. Cheng Tian
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  2. Ru-Hong Wen
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  4. Li-Hua Gong
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Correspondence to Li-Hua Gong.

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Tian, C., Wen, RH., Zou, WP. et al. Robust and blind watermarking algorithm based on DCT and SVD in the contourlet domain. Multimed Tools Appl 79, 7515–7541 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-019-08530-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-019-08530-z

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