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ISSN 2278-6856
Abstract
This paper presents a technique using one dimensional Walsh
coding to improve the robustness of watermarking in gray
scale digital still images. The proposed technique inserts bits
of binary biometric image in the DCT blocks of a digital
image. During the proposed method, the 1-D Walsh functions
are used to encode the fingerprint before being embedded in
the host image. The application of Walsh coding is made
using the horizontal 1-D Walsh coding. By utilizing this type
of coding, each row of the fingerprints vectors will be
replaced by its equivalent Walsh code where they will make a
queue horizontally to get the modulated signal. During the
decoding process, the original fingerprints bits are recognized
by the use of odd and even functions. The proposed technique
retains the image quality and produces robustness against
JPEG compression.
1. INTRODUCTION
In the form of watermark, copyright protection
information is embedded in the digital Image
Watermarking. By the presence of watermark, the host
image must be clear and there will be no sign of visibility
of watermark. It is now required to maintain the
robustness. Thus, the watermark must be authorized for
illegal detection. The watermark must be tolerant to image
processing techniques as well as to intentional attempts to
destroy the watermark like grey level modifications and
geometrical transformations.
In digital watermarking, the watermark can be inserted in
either the spatial or the transformed domain. The
transform domain watermarking schemes are typically
more robust to image manipulation compared to the
spatial domain schemes. In transform domain Discrete
Fourier Transform (DFT), Discrete Cosine Transform
(DCT), and Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT) are used.
Watermarks may also be classified as robust or fragile.
Robust watermarks are difficult to remove from the object
in which they are embedded despite of various attacks.
Fragile watermarks are easily destroyed by any attempt to
tamper them. Two types of watermarking techniques are
ISSN 2278-6856
W3= [ +1 -1 -1 +1 ]
W4= [ +1 -1 +1 -1 ]
These methods are being implemented by taking the
fingerprints 64 binary bits and swap them with the Walsh
codes. The resulted Walsh coded would have 64X256 bits
of values: +1 and -1 only. The pixel value of the
fingerprint is changed from binary [0, 1] to integer values
in the range [-1, +1].
In this section original gray scale image is divided to 8X8
blocks by applying DCT. Then the watermark i.e
biometric image is converted into their equivalent 1-D
Walsh code to embed all and IDCT is applied to get
watermarked image. It is generalized to embed two
watermarks in the same image while retaining high image
quality.
2.2 Algorithm using DCT blocks
In this proposed method, the watermark is embedded in
DCT blocks by modifying the very low frequency band,
excluding the DC component. In the embedding process,
initially the fingerprint is encoded by using 1-D Walsh
code and then the encoded elements are inserted into the
DCT blocks coefficients of the host image. The 1D Walsh
encoded fingerprints elements are inserted into the DCT
block coefficients of the host image. This is done by
modifying the DCT coefficient value. First it is divided by
a scaling factor and then rounded to an integer:
Figure 5(a), 6(a) & 7(a)- 512 X 512 Host gray scale
image
ISSN 2278-6856
The PSNR values lie between 42.64 dB and 55.93 dB. The
results show that increasing the value of scaling factor
will affect the quality of the watermarked image. From
Table 4.1 the values of the SSIM lie in the range 0.9747 to
0.9993. It is clear that the distortion caused by the new
watermarking scheme is invisible in all tested images. The
algorithm was tested against JPEG compression to
evaluate the robustness. Table 5.2 shows the lowest JPEG
quality below which the fingerprint image is not
recognizable as function of watermark strength. From
Table 4.2 the fingerprint can be recovered with a scaling
factor of 4 with JPEG quality > 92 in Cartoon image.
From the table it can be seen that the robustness is
improved each time the scaling factor is increased. The
fingerprint can be recovered with JPEG quality > 23 at a
scaling factor=20 as shown in Adya and Sony images. It is
worth mentioning that increasing the scaling factor above
a certain limit will affect the watermarked image quality.
The results show that the proposed algorithm is robust
against JPEG attack. The algorithm was also tested under
different attacks by using the StirMark standard
benchmark. The test was done on the standard image of
Adya with a scaling factor 20. Table 4.3 shows the
StirMark attacks and their NC values.
4.2 Evaluation using Walsh Length 8
The watermarking scheme was also tested using Walsh
length 8. Table 4.4 examines the quality of the
watermarked images using different values of scaling
factors and their respective PSNR values. The values of
scaling factors are 4, 12, 16 and 20, and the PSNR values
lie between 41.64 dB and 54.64 dB respectively. It is clear
that the distortion caused by the new watermarking
scheme is invisible in all images. The values of the SSIM
are in the range 0.9698 and 0.9996. Table 4.5 shows the
lowest JPEG quality below which the fingerprint is not
recognizable as function of the watermark strength. From
Table 4.5 the fingerprint can be recovered with a scaling
factor of 4 with JPEG quality > 91 in Cartoon image. The
fingerprint can be recovered with JPEG quality > 26 at a
scaling factor=20 as shown in Adya, Cartoon and Sony
images. It is concluded that the technique used is robust
against the JPEG attack. The similarity between the
original and the extracted fingerprint also was tested using
the NC measure, as shown in table 4.6.
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ISSN 2278-6856
5. CONCLUSION
A novel algorithm is obtained using one-dimensional
Walsh coding of four and eight Walsh lengths for
watermark embedding in the DCT domain of grey scale
images. The new algorithm was proposed to embed
biometric protection in the low frequency of the cover
image. The algorithm is robust against JPEG compression
and the common watermarking attacks of image
processing. Simulation results have shown that using
Walsh coding before embedding offers robustness against
attacks and improvement in the quality of the
watermarked image. In the presented algorithms the
effectiveness of using different scaling factors were
examined in related to robustness and invisibility. The
algorithms could not deal with rotation because the DCT
coefficients are very sensitive to the smallest rotation
angles. The distortion caused by the watermarking
algorithms is not visible and it was assessed using the
PSNR and SSIM. The algorithms were, however only
designed for grey level images.
References
ISSN 2278-6856
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