A Fragile Watermarking Scheme for Color Image Authentication

Authors: M. Hamad Hassan, S.A.M. Gilani

Abstract:

In this paper, a fragile watermarking scheme is proposed for color image specified object-s authentication. The color image is first transformed from RGB to YST color space, suitable for watermarking the color media. The T channel corresponds to the chrominance component of a color image andYS ÔèÑ T , therefore selected for embedding the watermark. The T channel is first divided into 2×2 non-overlapping blocks and the two LSBs are set to zero. The object that is to be authenticated is also divided into 2×2 nonoverlapping blocks and each block-s intensity mean is computed followed by eight bit encoding. The generated watermark is then embedded into T channel randomly selected 2×2 block-s LSBs using 2D-Torus Automorphism. Selection of block size is paramount for exact localization and recovery of work. The proposed scheme is blind, efficient and secure with ability to detect and locate even minor tampering applied to the image with full recovery of original work. The quality of watermarked media is quite high both subjectively and objectively. The technique is suitable for class of images with format such as gif, tif or bitmap.

Keywords: Image Authentication, LSBs, PSNR, 2D-Torus Automorphism, YST Color Space.

Digital Object Identifier (DOI): doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1055236

References:

[1] I. Kostopoulos., A.N. Skodras, and D. Christodou-lakis, "Self Authentication of Colour Images", Proc. Of the European Conf. on Electronic Imaging & Visual Arts, Florence, Italy, March 26-30, 2001.
[2] Phen Lan Lin, Chung-Kai Hsieh, Po-Whei Huang,"A Hierarchical Digital Watermarking Method for Image Tamper Detection and Recovery, The Journal of Pattern Recognition, Elsevier, 2005.
[3] Jagdish C. Patra, Kah K. Ang and Ee-Luang Ang, "Hierarchical Multiple Image Watermarking for Image Authentication and Ownership Verification", ICIP, 2004.
[4] Francesco Benedetto, Gaetano Giunta, Alessandro Neri, "A New Color Space Domain for Digital Watermarking in Multimedia Applications", ICIP, 2005.
[5] G. Voyatzis, I. Pitas, "Applications of Toral Automorphism in Image Watermarking," ICIP 1996, Vol II, pp.237-240, 1996.
[6] T. Liu and Z.D. Qiu, "The Survey of Digital Watermarking Based Image Authentication Techniques", 6th International Conference, pp. 1566- 1559, 2002.
[7] S. Walton, "Image Authentication for a Slippery New Age", Dr. Dobb-s Journal of Software Tools for Professional Programmers, Vol. 20, Apr. 1995.
[8] M. Yeung and F. Mintzer, "An Invisible Watermarking Technique for Image Verification", Proc. ICIP 1997, Santa Barbara, California, Oct. 1997.
[9] J. Fridrich, "Image Watermarking for Tamper Detection", Proc. ICIP Chicago, Oct 1998.
[10] J.Fridrich and M.Goljan, "Protection of Digital Images using Self Embedding", Symposium on Content Security and Data Hiding in Digital Media, Newark, NJ, USA, May 1999.
[11] J. Fridrich, "Methods for Tamper Detection in Digital Images", Multimedia and Security Workshop at ACM Multimedia 1999, Orlando, Florida, USA, Oct, 1999.