Optical asymmetric watermarking using modified wavelet fusion and diffractive imaging

In most of the existing image encryption algorithms the generated keys are in the form of a noise like distribution with a uniform distributed histogram. However, the noise like distribution is an apparent sign indicating the presence of the keys. If the keys are to be transferred through some communication channels, then this may lead to a security problem. This is because; the noise like features may easily catch people׳s attention and bring more attacks. To address this problem it is required to transfer the keys to some other meaningful images to disguise the attackers. The watermarking schemes are complementary to image encryption schemes. In most of the iterative encryption schemes, support constraints play an important role of the keys in order to decrypt the meaningful data. In this article, we have transferred the support constraints which are generated by axial translation of CCD camera using amplitude-, and phase- truncation approach, into different meaningful images. This has been done by developing modified fusion technique in wavelet transform domain. The second issue is, in case, the meaningful images are caught by the attacker then how to solve the copyright protection. To resolve this issue, watermark detection plays a crucial role. For this purpose, it is necessary to recover the original image using the retrieved watermarks/support constraints. To address this issue, four asymmetric keys have been generated corresponding to each watermarked image to retrieve the watermarks. For decryption, an iterative phase retrieval algorithm is applied to extract the plain-texts from corresponding retrieved watermarks.     

Watermarks encrypted in the cascaded Fresnel digital hologram

A cascaded Fresnel digital hologram (CFDH) is proposed, together with its mathematical derivation. Its application to watermarking has been demonstrated by a simulation procedure, in which the watermark image to be hidden is encoded into the phase of the host image. The watermark image can be deciphered by the CFDH setup, the reconstructed image shows good quality and the error is almost closed to zeros. Compared with previous technique, this is a lensless architecture, which minimizes the hardware requirement.     

Improved versions of Tardos’ fingerprinting scheme

We study the Tardos’ probabilistic fingerprinting scheme and show that its codeword length may be shortened by a factor of approximately 4. We achieve this by retracing Tardos’ analysis of the scheme and extracting from it all constants that were arbitrarily selected. We replace those constants with parameters and derive a set of inequalities that those parameters must satisfy so that the desired security properties of the scheme still hold. Then we look for a solution of those inequalities in which the parameter that governs the codeword length is minimal. A further reduction in the codeword length is achieved by decoupling the error probability of falsely accusing innocent users from the error probability of missing all colluding pirates. Finally, we simulate the Tardos scheme and show that, in practice, one may use codewords that are shorter than those in the original Tardos scheme by a factor of at least 16.      

On an optimal robust digital image watermarking based on SVD using differential evolution algorithm

It is shown that the optimal robust digital image watermarking based on singular value decomposition using differential evolution algorithm proposed by Veysel Aslantas [Opt. Commun. 282(5):769-777 (2009)] has a serious fundamental flaw and should not be used for proof of ownership application.     

Image watermarking by using phase retrieval algorithm in gyrator transform domain

We propose an image watermarking scheme based on the phase retrieval algorithm in gyrator domain. The watermark is converted into a noise-like image by Arnold transform. The scrambled image is regarded as the amplitude of gyrator spectrum. The Gerchberg-Saxton algorithm is employed to obtain the unknown phase function in gyrator pair, in which the host image is the amplitude of input function. The phase information and the parameters of the two transforms serve as the key of watermarking algorithm. The numerical simulation has demonstrated the performance of the proposed algorithm.     

Cryptanalysis and improvement of a binary watermark-based copyright protection scheme for remote sensing images

The copyright protection of the remote sensing images is becoming a hot research topic in recent years. By considering the characteristics of the binary image, Zhu et al. proposed a new digital watermarking algorithm to protect the copyright of remote sensing images effectively. However, Zhu et al.’s scheme is not secure under the novel attack method proposed in this paper. While keeping the visual quality of the protected original image unchanged, the embedded watermark can be replaced with another watermark if the attacker has the host image carrying the other watermark. Thus the copyright of the original image changes and the copyright protection fail. To overcome the insecurity, a chaos-based improvement measure is proposed, in which the performance is the same as before. Analysis, proof, and experiment show that our methods are feasible and effective.     

Block based embedding of encrypted watermarks using singular value decomposition

Watermarking is a solution to the problem of copyright protection of multimedia documents over the Internet. This paper presents a block based watermarking scheme using the singular value decomposition (SVD) algorithm to embed encrypted watermarks into digital images. The paper compares between the traditional method of Liu and the proposed method for embedding encrypted watermarks. Also, a permutation based encryption algorithm and a diffusion based encryption algorithm are compared as the watermark encryption algorithms. Experimental results show that the proposed method is superior to the traditional method of Liu for embedding encrypted watermarks and extracting them efficiently under attacks. Results also show that it is preferred to use permutation based encryption algorithms than diffusion based encryption algorithms for watermark encryption due to their lower sensitivity to attacks.     

Reversible authentication and cross-recovery of images using (t, n)-threshold and modified-RCM watermarking

This paper presents an image authentication scheme for digital images. The proposed scheme protects a group of n images mutually. It designs a block matching procedure to generate the recovery data for each image, and applies a (t, n − 1), 2 ≤ t < n, threshold mechanism to encode each recovery data in n − 1 shares. The recovery shares are cross-embedded in the n images using a modified reversible contrast mapping watermarking scheme. A signature-based authentication code is finally generated and stamped to provide evidence for integrity of each image. The scheme not only can detect the tampering activities, but also can locate and recover the invalid regions of the tampered image if t or more watermarked images in the same group were intact. A nice characteristic of the proposed scheme is that the original images can be reconstructed lossless if no watermarked image was tampered, making the technique feasible in the application of protecting very sensitive images such as military or medical images. Experimental results show that the proposed scheme successfully detects various kinds of image alterations such as filtering, cropping, and replacement, and the corrupted images are properly recovered using the cross-recovery scheme.     

Multiple color-image fusion and watermarking based on optical interference and wavelet transform

A novel multiple color-image fusion and watermarking using optical interference and wavelet transform is proposed. In this method, each secret color image is encoded into three phase-only masks (POMs). One POM is constructed as user identity key and the other two POMs are generated as user identity key modulated by corresponding secret color image in gyrator transform domain without using any time-consuming iterative computations or post-processing of the POMs to remove inherent silhouette problem. The R, G, and B channels of different user identity keys POM are then individually multiplied to get three multiplex POMs, which are exploited as encrypted images. Similarly the R, G, and B channels of other two POMs are independently multiplied to obtain two sets of three multiplex POMs. The encrypted images are fused with gray-level cover image to produce the final encrypted image as watermarked image. The secret color images are shielded by encrypted images (which have no information about secret images) as well as cover image (which reveals no information about encrypted images). These two remarkable features of the proposed system drastically reduce the probability of the encrypted images to be searched and attacked. Each individual user has an identity key and two phase-only keys as three decryption keys besides transformation angles regarded as additional keys. Theoretical analysis and numerical simulation results validate the feasibility of the proposed method.     

Designing a genetic watermarking approach for 3D scenes

A new watermarking algorithm based on genetic algorithm (GA) in the transform domain is proposed. Unlike the existing computer-generated integral imaging based watermarking methods, the proposed method utilizes GA searching to the optimized transform domain to serve as a trade-off for watermark embedding. In this paper, 3D scene to be captured by using a virtual pinhole array and be computationally recorded as an elemental image array (EIA), watermarking with GA optimization and computer-generated holography is implemented. In the proposed GA optimization process, we utilize the fitness function to improve the visual quality of watermarked images and the robustness. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm yields a holographic watermark that is imperceptibility to human eyes and robust to standard watermarking attacks. A comparison of the proposed watermarking method to the existing similar watermarking methods demonstrated that the proposed method generally outperforms completing methods in terms of imperceptibility and robustness.