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Robust and imperceptible watermarking scheme based on Canny edge detection and SVD in the contourlet domain

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Abstract

To enhance the invisibility and the robustness of the watermarking algorithm, a robust and imperceptible watermarking scheme is presented by combining Canny edge detection, contourlet transform with singular value decomposition. The host image is firstly decomposed by the contourlet transform. Then the low frequency sub-band obtained by contourlet transform is partitioned into 4×4 non-overlapping blocks and the singular value decomposition is carried out for the specific blocks selected by the Canny edge detection. Finally, the watermark is embedded into the coefficient of matrix U. The embedded watermark could be recovered blindly in the watermark extraction stage. And the robustness and the imperceptibility are efficiently guaranteed with an optimal threshold k selected by the least-square curve fitting. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed watermarking scheme is superior in terms of imperceptibility and robustness against common attacks.

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Acknowledgments

This work is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 61861029 and 61462061), 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

    Li-Hua Gong, Cheng Tian, Wei-Ping Zou & Nan-Run Zhou

  2. XLIM UMR CNRS 7252, University of Poitiers, Poitiers, France

    Wei-Ping Zou

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  1. Li-Hua Gong
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  2. Cheng Tian
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  3. Wei-Ping Zou
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  4. Nan-Run Zhou
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Correspondence to Nan-Run Zhou.

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Gong, LH., Tian, C., Zou, WP. et al. Robust and imperceptible watermarking scheme based on Canny edge detection and SVD in the contourlet domain. Multimed Tools Appl 80, 439–461 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-020-09677-w

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-020-09677-w

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