This survey presents a brief discussion of different aspects of digital image watermarking. Included in the present discussion are these general concepts: major characteristics of digital watermark, novel and recent applications of watermarking, different kinds of watermarking techniques and common watermark embedding and extraction process. In addition, recent state-of-art watermarking techniques, potential issues and available solutions are discussed in brief. Further, the performance summary of the various state-of-art watermarking techniques is presented in tabular format. This survey contribution will be useful for the researchers to implement efficient watermarking techniques for secure e-governance applications.

A recent survey on image watermarking techniques and its application in e-governance

Image watermarking techniques are used to provide copyright protection and verify ownership of media/entities. This technique refers to the concept of embedding of secret data/information of an owner in a given media/entity for determining any ownership conflicts that can arise. Many watermarking approaches have been offered by various authors in the last few years. However, there are not enough studies and comparisons of watermarking techniques in soft computing environments. Nowadays, soft computing techniques are used to improve the performance of watermarking algorithms. This paper surveys soft computing-based image watermarking for several applications. We first elaborate on novel applications, watermark characteristics and different kinds of watermarking systems. Then, soft computing based watermarking approaches providing robustness, imperceptibility and good embedding capacity are compared systematically. Furthermore, major issues and potential solutions for soft computing-based watermarking are also discussed to encourage further research in this area. Thus, this survey paper will be helpful for researchers to implement an optimized watermarking scheme for several applications.

Image watermarking using soft computing techniques: A comprehensive survey

An efficient ROI based copyright protection scheme for digital images with SVD and orthogonal polynomials transformation

Authentication of medical data and reports is a significant issue for preparing, editing, and transmitting the patient report. Medical information transfer requires communication technologies in order to offer health care services. This achieves mutual availability of therapeutic case studies among different diagnostic hospitals or centers which are very widespread. One key for accomplishing information security for reliable transmission purposes is digital watermarking through the embedding of hidden information, a hospital logo, or secret information within the medical images. The present work proposes a novel authentication system for robust biomedical content, which embeds multiple hospitals’ logos or multiple electronic patient records within the medical image. A hybrid approach for watermarking based on discrete cosine transformation, discrete wavelet transformation, and singular value decomposition teamed with optimization algorithms is proposed. The optimization algorithms used include a genetic algorithm, a quantum-inspired genetic algorithm, and a quantum-inspired evolutionary algorithm. These algorithms are applied to discover the optimal possible scaling factors for embedding. Three different medical sets are used to examine the proposed approach, including microscopic, ultrasound, and magnetic resonance imaging images. The results show that the proposed method established an accurate authentication system for information exchange with high robustness, imperceptibility, and payload. The results prove the dominance of both the quantum-inspired evolutionary algorithm and quantum-inspired genetic algorithm over the genetic algorithm.

Quantum-inspired evolutionary algorithm for scaling factor optimization during manifold medical information embedding

Nature-inspired algorithms (NIAs) have gained a significant popularity in recent years to tackle hard real world problems and solve complex optimization functions whose actual solution does not exist. Many new algorithms have been developed which show their capabilities almost in every aspect, where rapid solutions are needed. A survey of the NIAs that are used to find the optimal digital image watermarking has been presented in this paper. Different paradigms have been considered, Genetic algorithm (GA), particle swarm optimization (PSO), differential evolution (DE), ant colony optimization (ACO), bee algorithm (BA), cat swarm optimization (CSO), firefly algorithm (FA) and cuckoo search algorithm (CS) that help to find the optimal digital image watermarking.

A Survey of Digital Image Watermarking Optimization based on Nature Inspired Algorithms NIAs

To protect the copyright of digital image, this paper proposed a combined Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT) and Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) based watermarking scheme. To embed the watermark, the cover image was decomposed by a 2-level DWT, and the HL2 sub-band coefficient was divided into 4x4 blocks, then the DCT was performed on each of these blocks. The watermark bit was embedded by predefined pattern_0 or pattern_1 on the middle band coefficients of DCT. After watermark insertion, inverse DCT was applied to each of the 4x4 blocks of HL2 sub-band coefficient, and inverse DWT was applied to obtain the watermarked image. For watermark extraction, the watermarked image, which may be attacked by various image attacks, was decomposed with 2-level DWT and DCT similarly as watermark embedding process, then correlation between middle band coefficients of block DCT and the predefined pattern (pattern_0 and pattern_1) was calculated to decide whether a bit 0 or a bit 1 was embedded. Genetic algorithm was used for embedding and extraction parameters optimization. Optimization is to maximize PSNR of the watermarked image and NCC of the extracted watermark. Experiment results show that the proposed scheme in this paper is robust against many image attacks, and improvement can be observed when compared to other existing schemes.

Li Yan

Papers

A Combined DWT and DCT Watermarking Scheme Optimized Using Genetic Algorithm