WADIA

AN EFFICIENT ALGORITHM FOR

WATERMARKING OF IMAGES WITH
ABRUPT INTENSITY VARIATIONS.

IPCV’08
Srikar V
Room No-118,
Sindhu Hall,
Morena Link Road,
IIITM, Gwalior
Ph-91-9827722439
srikar@iiitm.ac.in

Atul Verma
Room No-151,
Sindhu Hall,
Morena Link Road
IIITM,Gwalior
Ph:-91-9406587228
atul@iiitm.ac.in
ABSTRACT
The growth of computer networks has propelled the transformation from conventional libraries to
digital libraries. But at the same time it has also lead to piracy and illegal distribution of the content.
This has lead to the need for the owner of the content to use watermarking. In our paper we present
and efficient visible watermarking algorithm for images using DCT (Digital Cosine Transform). We
have named it WADIA (Watermarking Algorithm in DCT for Images with Abrupt intensity
variations).This algorithm proves to be efficient for especially for images with sharp intensity
variations and double edges. Also this algorithm uses a Gaussian filter before detecting the edges
which reduces the random noise in the image thereby reducing the possibility of false edges. For the
purpose of designing this algorithm we have made use of a Human Visual System (HVS) which
considers the characteristics of perception of the human eye. We have also presented the experimental
PSNR (Peak Signal to Noise Ratio) values of this algorithm along with those of various other
algorithms which use first order edge detection methods .

1. INTRODUCTION
Visible watermarking embeds the watermark into the host image in such as way that it is perceptible
to the human eye with out damaging the quality of the image while invisible watermarking embeds in
such a way that it is not visible to the human eye but can be extracted by a suitable extraction
algorithm for the purpose of verification.

The algorithm proposed by Kankanhalli et al [1] doesn't detect double edges while embedding the
algorithm. As a result for an image with abrupt intensity variations it may embed the watermark at the
edges of the image resulting in deterioration of the image quality.
Also the algorithm doesn't filter out any noise in the image before edge detection which is quite likely
to result in false edges. Our algorithm overcomes the above two difficulties by employing an
advanced edge detection technique.
In our algorithm we divide the image into blocks of equal size.
We have used the following equation to modify the DCT coefficients of the host image.

C ' ij ( n) c ( n)
n ij n w ij ( n) n=1, 2 ….. (1)
Where
C 'ij( n) is the modified DCT coefficient of the host image.
cij(n) is the DCT coefficient of the host image.
wij(n) is the DCT coefficient the watermark.
n is the scaling factor.

n is the embedding factor.

The rest of the paper is organized as follows:
In section 2 we present the details of Human Visual System (HVS) and those of embedding and
scaling factors.
In section 3 we present our actual algorithm.
In section 4 we present the experimental results of our algorithm.
In section 5 we present the conclusion.
In section 6 we present our future work.
Finally in Section 7 we have given the references to various journals and papers we have gone
through for writing this paper.
2. HUMAN VISUAL SYSTEM
While computing the scaling and embedding factors the following things have to be taken into
consideration:

The perceptibility of human eye is very high at the edges. Hence we have to see that the
scaling factor n is maximum at the edges while the embedding factor n should be
minimum.
In a region having a strong texture the distortion visibility is very low and hence the energy
tends to be more evenly distributed among the AC DCT coefficients [4]. Hence for textures
the AC DCT coefficients have very small variances. So more of watermark can be added in
such regions. For our convenience we assume that n is directly proportion to variance ( n )
and n is inversely proportional.
In accordance with the above requirements we have calibrated n and n as follows.
The n n for edge blocks are taken to be
and max and min respectively.
For non edge blocks n and n are taken to be
' ' ' 2
n n exp( ( n ) ) (2)

(3)
Where
' ' n '
n, are the normalized values of and respectively and n is the normalized
logarithm of variance n
We divide the host image I into blocks each of size 8 8 and find the DCT coefficients of each block.
We denote the DCT coefficients of the block n by cij(n) where n=1, 2, 3…..N represents the position
of the block in the image I when it is traversed in raster-scan manner.

Also where “row “and “column” represent the no. of rows and columns in
the image respectively.
The normalized mean gray value of the block n is found out using equation (4).

(4)

where c 00 max is the maximum value of c 00( n)

The normalized mean gray value of the image I is found out using equation (5)

(5)
The variance of AC DCT coefficients[4] of block n ( n ) is found out using equation (6)
 (6)
AC
Where n is the mean of AC DCT coefficients[4].
The normalized variance of AC DCT coefficients of block n is given by equation (7). Let us
*
denote the natural logarithm of n as n.

(7)
* *
where, max is the maximum value of n.
3. WADIA

Figure 1 shows the schematic representation of the watermark insertion process.

The steps in the algorithm are discussed below:
The host image I and the watermark W are divided into blocks each of size 8 8.
The DCT coefficients for each block of the host image are found out.
'
For each block in the host image I the normalized mean gray value n is found out using
equation(4) and is scaled to the range 0.1- 1.0.
The normalized mean gray value is found out using equation (5).
For the AC DCT coefficients, the normalized variances are found out using equation (7) and
are scaled to the range 0.1-1.0.
The edge blocks are identified using Canny edge operator.
n and n for non edge blocks are found out using equations (2) and (3) respectively .
The DCT of watermark image blocks are found out.
The nth block DCT of the host image is modified using equation (1).IDCT of the modified
coefficients gives the watermarked image.
 Figure 1

Figure 2 Figure 3 Figure 4

Host Image I Watermark W Watermarked Image

4. RESULTS
In this section we have presented the experimental results of our algorithm with various other first
order edge detection algorithms. For the purpose of uniformity we have used the same watermark for
all images.

Images PSNR values (in dB)

Canny Sobel Roberts Prewitt

25.3301 24.2802 24.0370 24.2506

24.2114 23.1640 23.0594 23.1474

22.3006 21.3561 21.3830 21.3531

We can clearly notice that in the case of our algorithm we are getting better results.

5. CONCLUSION

WADIA is found to take a greater CPU time than the one propose by Kankanhalli et al [1]. More over
in case if it is known well in advance that the image is Noise free applying Gaussian filter has no
meaning. Hence in case the image is uniform and it doesn't have double edges we recommend the one
proposed by Kankanhalli et al [1].

6. FUTURE WORK

Though WADIA works well for images with abrupt intensity changes it fails for textures and shades.
In the future we would like to incorporate changes to this algorithm such that it can be applied for
textures and shades also.
7. REFERENCES

[1] Dr. Saraju P. Mohanty, Dr.K.R.Ramakrishnan and Dr. Mohan S. Kankanhalli,”A DCT domain
visible watermarking for images”, Proc. of the IEEE international conference on Multimedia and
Expo, New York, USA, pp.1029-1032, July-August 2002.

[2] Dr. Fernando Perez- Gonzalez and Dr. Juan R. Hernandez, “A Tutorial on Digital Watermarking”,
Proc. of IEEE 33rd Annual 1999 International Carnahan Conference on Security Technology
,pp.286- 292, 5- 7 Oct 1999.

[3] Dr. Adrain Sequeira and Dr. Deepa Kundur,”Communication and Information Theory in
Watermarking: A Survey”.

[4] Dr.Syed Ali Kayyam, “The Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT): Theory and Application”,
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Michigan State University, March 10-2003.