Color Image Copyright Protection Digital Watermarking Algorithm Based on DWT & DCT

Mingwei Zhao Yanzhong Dang

Institute of Systems Engineering Dalian University of Technology Dalian, China zhaomw@dlut.edu.cn yzhdang@dlut.edu.cn quickly when we embed the watermark directly into low frequency sub-image without any process. In order to step out of this dilemma, we have to find a way to remove or weaken the correlation among the coefficients. The studies on DCT (Discrete Wavelet Transform) give us a lot of inspiration. The DCT is another common transform for image process. But its dramatic feature that removing correlation makes it the perfect solution to our dilemma [2]. We can firstly apply DCT to the DWT low frequency subimage and then embed the watermark. By doing this we can achieve a better balance between robustness and invisibility. II. CHAOTIC SIGNAL FOR WATERMARK ENCRYPTING

AbstractThis paper combines the visual characteristics of low frequency sub-image of DWT and the ability of DCT to remove correlation between DWT coefficients. By doing this, this paper improves a blind DCT watermarking algorithm to get a new color image digital watermarking schema based on DWT and DCT. The schema applies a self-adapted color component choosing strategy; Preprocesses the watermark by Logistic chaotic encryption; Applies the DCT to low frequency sub-image of DWT to get rid of coefficient correlation; In addition to that this schema extract strategy is blind by using sub-sampling technique. According to simulation results, this watermarking schema is robust under common attacks especially the compression attacks. Keywords-DWT; DCT; color components; color image; subsampling

Logistic mapping is a kind of simple but extensively studied chaotic system which is usually defined as: Xk+1 = Xk(1-Xk), Xk (0,1), 0 4 When 3.5699456< the mapping works chaotically: the sequence generated from different initial x0 is non-periodic, non-convergent, irrelevant and sensitive to the initial value x0. This chaotic sequence has several advantages: 1) It is simple. We only need the initial value x0 and chaotic mapping parameter if we want to generate a chaotic sequence. 2) It is sensitive to initial value. The sequences generated from different initial value x0 are different and it is hard to deduce the initial value from a chaotic sequence of a limited length. 3) It has the characteristics of white noise which make it widely used in many fields where need noise modulation. The method to generate chaotic modulation signal is shown as follows [3]: 1) Using Logistic mapping to generate a real number sequence {Sn, n = 1, 2, 3,}. Then select kk (equals to the size of the watermark) elements from Sn. In this paper we set the initial value x0 equals 0.123, and system parameter equals to 4. 2) We define a function as following to transform the sequence of kk into a binary chaotic sequence {T(Sn); n=1,2,, kk }. Here T denotes a function shown as follows:

I.

INTRODUCTION

Digital media has made our life more colorful because of its advantages like easier to access, copy and distribute. But as what we have seen, series of malice activities like copyright infringement, information distortion make serious damages to both the producers and the users of the digital products. So we really need a new technology to protect the copyright, authenticity, integrity of the digital products and the intellectual property and property safety of the users. Watermarking technology emerged under this background [1].
Foundation of China under project 70431001 and 70271046.A good digital watermarking algorithm is the one which finds a good balance between invisibility and robustness. We know that, the low frequency sub-image of n-level DWT (Discrete Wavelet Transform) is the convergence of strength of original image, so we name it as approximate sub-image; while the high frequency sub-images contain the fringe information. They are the depiction of detail parts of the image. So we name them as detail sub-image. The approximate sub-image is much more stable, and has a strong resist against the influences from outside; On the other hand, the detail sub-image is unstable, and could easily be affected by noise attacks or image processing. Based on the characteristic of DWT which we have analyzed above, we eagerly want to embed the watermark into the DWT low frequency sub-image to gain a better robustness, but unfortunately, the strong correlation among the Low frequency DWT Coefficients makes the invisibility fade This paper is based on work supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under project 70431001 and 70271046.

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0 T (Sn ) = 1

Sn Sn >

V1 (i, j ) = I (2i,2 j )

3) At last Sn is transformed into two-dimension chaotic modulation signal Z(i, j). III. WATERMARK ENCRYPTION

V3 (i, j ) = I (2i + 1,2 j )

V2 (i , j ) = I (2i,2 j + 1)

(1)

V4 (i , j ) = I (2i + 1,2 j + 1)

We use the chaotic modulation signal which has been obtained above to encrypt binary watermark. In this paper we use w(i, j)z(i, j) to get the encrypted binary watermark. Z(i, j) denotes the modulation signal. IV. WATERMARK EMBEDDING ALGORITHM

Where i = 0,1, 2, . . . , M/2-1, j = 0,1,2, . . , N/2 1. V1, V2, V3 and V4 denote sub-images through sub-sampling. I denote LLn. 5) Then apply DCT to four sub-images V1, V2, V3 and V4 to get four DCT coefficients set D1, D2, D3, and D4. 6) Select a key2 to generate a random sequence Z={(i,j)}, which serve as a coefficients selector, with length equal to W. 7) Reorder the coefficients in the sub-images after subsampling in Zig-Zag order identical to JPEG. Then choose same amount middle frequency coefficients to the watermark vector W which will be used to embed watermark. 8) According to each watermark bit, we use follow strategy to adjust DCT coefficient in different set. If Wm=1 and Di(m)<Dj(m), swap i and j in Z[m]. If Wm=0 and Di(m)>Dj(m), swap i and j in Z[m]. Where Di(m) denotes the mth coefficient in chose coefficients of set Di. While Di is chose by Z in advance. Wm is the mth bit in watermark vector W. 9) After (8), we get a adjusted coefficient selector Z. According to new Z, we calculate tow values: V=|Di|+| Dj| and d = Di-Dj. When |d/V|<, we do some adjustments to Di and Dj: Di' = Di+(2Wm-1)V/2; Dj' = Dj-(2Wm-1)V/2. Where Wm is the mth bit in watermark vector W and also the current embedded watermark bit, is embedding strength which could be changed to achieve a better effect. After procedure (9) we get four adjusted DCT coefficients set D1', D2', D3' and D4'. 10) Inverse DCT is applied to the altered DCT coefficients sets to obtain the watermarked sub-images. Then through composing those sub-images and applying inverse DWT, we get the watermarked image. V. WATERMARK EXTRACTING ALGORITHM The watermarked image may be modified intentionally or unintentionally. Under these circumstances the watermark should be extracted correctly. While the extraction procedure is the inverse procedure of embed. Firstly we get the embedding path by evaluate different color components of watermarked image. Then we apply DWT, sub-sampling and DCT to it as the same manner of embedding. Thirdly the same coefficient selector is used to recover the watermark embedding positions. At last, we get the watermark bit by bit by using the formular (2).
1 Wm = 0 if else Di D
' ' j

According to the characteristics of HVS we know that, on one hand, the eye is more sensitive to green color. But if we embed the watermark into green component, the algorithm is has a very good robustness against JPEG compression [4]. On the other hand, the eye is very insensitive to blue color which makes the blue component embedding algorithm has a better performance on invisibility [5]. Summarizing all above, we should not fix on the embedding path before we analyze the color feature of the host image. For example, when the green color takes up the larger proportion in the host image and the luminance of the green color component is higher, we could achieve a good robustness and invisibility if we embed watermark into it. But when the green color is not dominated in the host image, the embedding in green component would lead to a sharp decline on invisibility. At this time, we would get a better result if we embed into blue component. In this paper, we self-adapted choose the color component as the embedding path according to the proportions blue and green color components take up in a specific image to balance the invisibility and the robustness. Reference [6] is a DCT field blind watermarking algorithm. This paper applies this DCT sub-sampling blind strategy to DWT field to solve the visual distortion problem when embed the mark into low frequency sub-image of DWT field and then adds the self-adapted embedding color component choosing strategy to process the color image. We select MN RGB digital color image as original image and KK meaningful binary image as watermark. Then the procedure of embedding is as follows. 1) Apply the Logistic chaotic encryption to binary watermark and then spread it into a one-dimension vector W. 2) Apply color decomposition to original color image and then calculate the portion each color component takes up. Then choose the higher one from blue and green component as the embedding path. 3) Apply the L level DWT to the chosen color component then make the low frequency sub-image LLn as the embedding field. 4) We implement the sub-sampling in the field LLn according to (1). After that we get four sub-images V1, V2, V3, and V4.

(2)

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Thus, through comparing each pair of embedding coefficients, we extract the watermark sequence W. Next, apply decryption to it to get the original watermark. VI. SIMULATION AND ATTACK In order to test the performance of the proposed watermarking schema, we user the 512512 true color image lena and baboon, show in figure 2(1) and (2), as the test image. The 6464 binary image showed in figure 1 (1) is used as our watermark. Also in this simulation we apply two-level DWT to test image.

According to figure 3 we know that under pepper salt and Gaussian attacks, clear marks can be easily extracted. So this watermarking schema has a good performance under noise attacks. When the compression quality is 20, we still can extract clear mark, so the schema is very robust against compression. Given compression the most common attacks for images transportation online, this is really a favorite characteristic. In addition to its blind extraction schema, this watermarking schema guarantees a bright future. VII. COMPARISON Reference [6] is an effective blind watermarking schema based on DCT. The watermarking schema here takes advantage of this blind schema and brings it into DWT field. We combine characteristics of DCT and DWT to resolve the strong correlation among coefficients of DWT low frequency sumimage. What is more, by adding a self-adapted color component selection, we can deal with color images. Improved watermarking schema has a better performance on both invisibility and robustness, especially the robustness against compression. We implement our algorithm and the reference algorithm and then use the same original image and same watermark in the simulation test. The table I shows the PSNR of the watermarked images under attack, which are based on that two different algorithm.
TABLE I. Types of attacks JPEG quality 80 JPEG quality 40 JPEG quality 20 Gaussian noise 10% Gaussian noise 20% Salt and pepper noise 1% PSNR COMPARISON TO THE REFERENCE PAPER Lena PSNR
This paper algorithm Reference [6] algorithm

(1) Original watermark

(2) encrypted watermark

Figure 1. Original and encrypted watermark

(1) lena

(2) baboon

(3) watermarked (4) watermarked lena baboon

Figure 2. Original and watermarked images

From figure 2 it is safe to say the watermarked image and the original image are almost the same. Human eyes can hardly figure out the differences. So the watermarking schema has a good invisibility. The PSNR of watermarked lena is 48.5603, while the watermarked baboon is 46.7851.The NC of watermark extracted from Lena and Baboon are 0.9995 and 0.9906. When PSNR is higher than 30, recomposed image has a very good quality and the eye could hardly tell the difference between the original and the recomposed image. While when NC is higher than 0.7, the extracted mark is considered as valid one. From this we can safely say that the watermarking schema proposed in this paper has a good invisibility and can extract the marks correctly. Figure 3 shows the extracted marks from watermarked images under compression and noise attacks.

Baboon PSNR
This paper algorithm Reference [6] algorithm

42.2848 38.0994 34.4233 20.4536 18.1370 28.1606 25.3756

34.7477 32.5632 31.4136 27.4418 26.7478 25.8445 24.2378

35.9067 26.6069 25.0984 26.5994 13.9428 28.0113 22.5786

33.3664 23.5516 22.7045 20.0514 19.1543 25.3455 22.3759

(1)JPEG Q=20

(2)JPEG Q=40

(3)JPEG Q=70

(4)JPEG Q=80

Salt and pepper noise 2%

(5) Salt and pepper (6) Salt and pepper noise 1% noise 2%

(7) Gaussian noise 10%

(8) Gaussian noise 20%

Figure 3. Marks extracted from attacked Lena

While table II shows the comparison between watermarks extracted from our schema and reference algorithm under compression attacks. Table III shows the NC comparison between them two. From the two tables, we can see that our schema has made a progress on robustness against compression in terms of the algorithm in reference. We can extract a legible watermark even the compression quality is 20, while the mark extracted according to the reference algorithm is illegible.

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TABLE II.

EXTRACTED WATERMARK COMPARISON TO THE REFERENCE

PAPER UNDER COMPRESSION ATTACK

Extracting watermark Types of attacks

This paper algorithm Reference [6] algorithm

Compression images
This paper algorithm Reference [6] algorithm

VIII. CONCLUSIONS In this paper, we improved a DCT field blind watermarking algorithm for copyright protection. We bring this blind algorithm into DWT field, and apply it into color image by adding a color component selection schema. Its characteristics can be summarized as follows. (1) Combine DCT with DWT. This algorithm takes advantage of low frequency DWT sub-image to guarantee its robustness, in the same time applies the DCT to the sub-image to guarantee its invisibility. (2) This schema is very robust against compression. Even if the quality equals 20, we still can extract legible watermark. (3) The watermark extraction is simple and doesnt need the original image. It is a blind extraction strategy. (4) Logistic chaotic encryption is used to encrypt the mark. This procedure makes the watermarking system safer.

JPEG quality 80

JPEG quality 40

JPEG quality 20

(5) Self-adapted color component selection strategy makes the watermarking system more fixable when deal with the color image. Because of the limited DWT low frequency sub-image, the size of the watermark that can be embedded is limited.

TABLE III.

LENAS NC COMPARISON TO THE REFERENCE PAPER Lena PSNR

REFERENCES
[1] J. R. Hemandez, M. Amado, DCT domain watermarking techniques for still images as detector performance analysis and a new structure, in IEEE Transactions on Image Processing, 2000, vol. 9, pp. 55-68. Q. Du, Color image digital watermarking algorithm based on DCT and quantifying, in Journal of Soochow university, 2006, vol. 26, pp. 47-51. Z. M. Zhang, L. Wang, Semiblind image watermarking algorithm in DCT domain with chaotic encryption, in Computer Engineering, 2003, vol. 29, pp. 10. L. S. Liu, R. H. Li, Q. Gao, Method of embedding digital watermark into the green component of color image, in Journal of XianJiaotong university, 2004, vol. 38, pp. 1256-1259. S. Z. Yu, A color image-adptive watermark based on wavelet transform, in Computer Simulation, 2006, vol. 23, pp. 132-134. L. Wei, H. T. Lu, F. L. Chung, Robust digital image watermarking based on subsampling, in Applied Mathematics and Computation, 2006, vol. 181, pp. 886-893.

Types of attacks

This paper algorithm

Literature algorithm

JPEG quality 80 JPEG quality 40 JPEG quality 20 Gaussian noise 10% Gaussian noise 20% Salt and pepper noise 1% Salt and pepper noise 2%

0.9767 0.9252 0.8635 0.7726 0.4159 0.5473 0.4657

0.9183 0.8178 0.7696 0.7801 0.5749 0.6589 0.6037

[2] [3]

[4]

[5] [6]

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