Optimization of Bit Plane Combination for Efficient Digital Image Watermarking

📝 Abstract

In view of the frequent multimedia data transfer authentication and protection of images has gained importance in todays world. In this paper we propose a new watermarking technique, based on bit plane, which enhances robustness and capacity of the watermark, as well as maintains transparency of the watermark and fidelity of the image. In the proposed technique, higher strength bit plane of digital signature watermark is embedded in to a significant bit plane of the original image. The combination of bit planes (image and watermark) selection is an important issue. Therefore, a mechanism is developed for appropriate bit plane selection. Ten different attacks are selected to test different alternatives. These attacks are given different weightings as appropriate to user requirement. A weighted correlation coefficient for retrieved watermark is estimated for each of the alternatives. Based on these estimated values optimal bit plane combination is identified for a given user requirement. The proposed method is found to be useful for authentication and to prove legal ownership. We observed better results by our proposed method in comparison with the previously reported work on pseudorandom watermark embedded in least significant bit (LSB) plane.

💡 Analysis

In view of the frequent multimedia data transfer authentication and protection of images has gained importance in todays world. In this paper we propose a new watermarking technique, based on bit plane, which enhances robustness and capacity of the watermark, as well as maintains transparency of the watermark and fidelity of the image. In the proposed technique, higher strength bit plane of digital signature watermark is embedded in to a significant bit plane of the original image. The combination of bit planes (image and watermark) selection is an important issue. Therefore, a mechanism is developed for appropriate bit plane selection. Ten different attacks are selected to test different alternatives. These attacks are given different weightings as appropriate to user requirement. A weighted correlation coefficient for retrieved watermark is estimated for each of the alternatives. Based on these estimated values optimal bit plane combination is identified for a given user requirement. The proposed method is found to be useful for authentication and to prove legal ownership. We observed better results by our proposed method in comparison with the previously reported work on pseudorandom watermark embedded in least significant bit (LSB) plane.

📄 Content

(IJCSIS) International Journal of Computer Science and Information Security,
Vol. 4, Aug 2009 Optimization of Bit Plane Combination for Efficient Digital Image Watermarking

Sushma Kejgir Department of Electronics and Telecommunication Engg. SGGS Institute of Engineering and Technology, Vishnupuri,
Nanded, Maharashtra, India. sbdabade@yahoo.co.in

Manesh Kokare Department of Electronics and Telecommunication Engg. SGGS Institute of Engineering and Technology, Vishnupuri, Nanded, Maharashtra, India. mbkokare@sggs.ac.in Abstract: In view of the frequent multimedia data transfer authentication and protection of images has gained importance in today’s world. In this paper we propose a new watermarking technique, based on bit plane, which enhances robustness and capacity of the watermark, as well as maintains transparency of the watermark and fidelity of the image. In the proposed technique, higher strength bit plane of digital signature watermark is embedded in to a significant bit plane of the original image. The combination of bit planes (image and watermark) selection is an important issue. Therefore, a mechanism is developed for appropriate bit plane selection. Ten different attacks are selected to test different alternatives. These attacks are given different weightings as appropriate to user requirement. A weighted correlation coefficient for retrieved watermark is estimated for each of the alternatives. Based on these estimated values optimal bit plane combination is identified for a given user requirement. The proposed method is found to be useful for authentication and to prove legal ownership. We observed better results by our proposed method in comparison with the previously reported work on pseudorandom watermark embedded in least significant bit (LSB) plane.

Keywords: Digital signature watermark, Bit plane watermark embedding method, Correlation coefficient, weighted correlation coefficient.
I. INTRODUCTION: A. Motivation: Watermarking is an important protection and identification technique in which an invisible mark is hidden in the multimedia information such as audio, image, video, or text. It has been developed to protect digital signal (information) against illegal reproduction, modifications. The watermarking is also useful to prove legal ownership and authentication. A good fidelity transparent watermarking provides the watermark imperceptible to human visual system (HVS) that is human-eye cannot distinguish the original data from the watermarked data.
In the past literature on watermarking it is observed that bit plane method is one of the recommended methods of watermarking in spatial domain. This method is characterized by spread spectrum and is blind while watermark retrieval. Optimal implementation of this method maximizes the fidelity and robustness against different attacks. This method is based on the fact that the least significant bit plane of the image does not contain visually significant information. Therefore it can be easily replaced with watermark bits without affecting the quality of original image. However the survival of the watermark is an open issue and two main drawbacks of inserting watermark in least significant and most significant bits are: • If watermark is inserted in least significant bit planes then the watermark may not survive against coding, channel noise, mild filtering or random bit-flipping.
• On the other hand, if the watermark is embedded in most significant bit plane, watermark survives but image quality is degraded.
Therefore, to get optimal results, in terms of fidelity, robustness, and high embedding capacity, a new bit plane modification method is proposed in this paper.

B. Our Approach: To overcome above problems, we propose the novel method for image watermarking. Proposed method differs in two different ways than the earlier technique of bit plane watermarking. Firstly, to prove the ownership or identify the owner, most effective digital signature watermark is embedded instead of pseudorandom watermark. Secondly, instead of LSB, a previous bit to LSB is identified for watermark embedding to avoid the degradation of image and to survive the watermark after different general attacks like coding, channel noise, mild filtering or random bit- flipping. The advantages of the proposed method are summarized as follows.
• Proposed approach is optimal. • Maximizes the fidelity. • Maximizes the robustness against different attacks. • Proposed method is having more payload capacity.
The rest of the paper is organized as follows: earlier related work to bit plane method is discussed in section 2. The proposed significant bit plane modification watermarking algorithm is discussed in section 3. The experimental results are presented in section 4, which is followed by conclusion and future scope in section 5. (IJCSIS)

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