A Hybrid Block Based Watermarking Algorithm using DWT-DCT-SVD Techniques for Color Images

V.Santhi, N. Rekha , S.Tharini

this paper, we propose a robust watermarking technique which combines features of Discrete wavelet transformation (DWT), discrete cosine transformation and singular value decomposition. In this technique DWT is used to decompose the color images into various frequency and time scale. Block DCT is applied on DWT coefficients of various frequency to provide high level of robustness. DCT transformed blocks of size 4x4 are further decomposed using dual SVD technique to get singular values in which watermark is to be hidden. Algorithm is tested using Lena test image in RGB and YIQ color model. As per the results combining feature of DWT-DCT with SVD technique provides robustness against image processing and geometric attacks in YIQ color model than RGB color model.

AbstractIn

watermark may be difficult to hide. On the other hand, if the watermark is embedded in perceptually insignificant components, it would be easier to hide the watermark but the scheme may be less to resilient to attacks [3].Most Researches pay attention to the development of watermarking schemes for grayscale images than color images [4]. In the proposed method, cover image is converted into RGB color spaces to decorrelate it then watermark of size 64x64 is hidden into any one color spaces of a cover image, obtained results are tabulated. Similarly input image is converted into YIQ color space and watermark is hidden into either in luminance or in chrominance components. Finally results of RGB color space is compared with YIQ space. In section I introduction about the necessity of watermarking is given. Section II discuss about preliminaries of transformation techniques used and SVD technique briefly. In section III proposed algorithm is given in detail as step by step procedure. Section IV discusses in detail the performance evaluation of proposed algorithm. Section V discusses about watermarking in YIQ color spaces. Based on results obtained the features of proposed algorithm is concluded in section VI.
II. PRELIMINARIES OF DWT-DCT-SVD

Keywords Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT), Discrete

Cosine Transform (DCT) and Singular Value Decomposition (SVD).

I. INTRODUCTION With the growth of networked multimedia systems, the need of secure communication and data transfer is increasing [1].Among todays information security techniques, multimedia authentication techniques become a powerful tool for protecting multimedia content. Watermarking is one of the multimedia authentication techniques [2].Watermarking is the process of embedding data into a multimedia element such as an image, audio or video file for the purpose of authentication. This embedded data can later be extracted from, or detected in, the multimedia for security purposes. A watermarking algorithm consists of the watermark structure, an embedding algorithm, and an extraction or detection algorithm. Watermarks can be embedded in the pixel domain or a transform domain. In multimedia applications, embedded watermarks should be invisible, robust and have a high capacity. The most important uses of watermarks include copyright protection and disabling unauthorized access to content [3]. In recent years, many watermarking schemes have been developed using DWT and DCT. If the watermark is embedded perceptually most significant components, the scheme would be robust to attacks but the
V.Santhi is with VIT University, Vellore, India (Cell: 9865762713; email: vsanthi@ vit.ac.in). N.Rekha and S.Tharini is with VIT University, School of Computing Sciences,Vellore, India,

A. Discrete wavelet transformation DWT is a new technique which is used to represent image in a new time and frequency scale in recent years. The basic function of DWT is decomposing the input signal to multiresolutions. If input signal is an image DWT decompose it into low frequency (LL) and high frequency (HL, LH and HH).HL represents the horizontal detail, LH represents the vertical detail and HH represents the diagonal part. The low frequency band is the optimal approximation of the original image, which is determined by the DWT decomposition progressions that represents the maximum scale and distinguishing degree [5]. B. Discrete cosine transformation DCT function is a transformation technique which transforms the input image from spatial domain to frequency domain. In DCT-based watermarking, the DCT coefficients are modified to embed watermark data [6]. DCT is used in many standardized image, audio, and video compression methods. It has shown its superiority in

reduction of the redundancy of a wide range of signals [2]. In proposed method block DCT is used to increase the robustness. C. Singular value decomposition SVD is a mathematical tool used to analyze matrices. In SVD, a given matrix A is decomposed into three matrices such that, A=USVT where U and V are orthogonal matrices and UT U=I, VT V=I, I is an identity matrix. The diagonal entries of S are called the singular values of A, the columns of U are called the left singular vectors of A, and the columns of V are called the right singular vectors of A. This decomposition is known as the singular value decomposition (SVD) of A [7]. The three main properties of SVD from the view point of image processing applications [8][9]: 1. The singular values of an image have very good stability, that is, when a small perturbation is added to an image, its singular values do not change significantly. 2. Each Singular value specifies the luminance of an image layer while the corresponding pair of singular vectors specifies the geometry of the image. 3. Singular values represent intrinsic algebraic properties. SVD belongs to a kind of transforming domain technique, the principle is to embed the watermark into the SVD domain of original image, but more time has to be spent to process the whole image. To enhance the efficiency of watermarking algorithm block-SVD can be used. [10]
III. PROPOSED ALGORITHM

4. 5.

6. 7. 8.

9.

10. 11. 12. 13.

Apply SVD to all DCT transformed blocks, B ij = Uij Sij VijT . Extract the ij maximum singular value in S ij, the maximum singular value from every block can build a new matrix C, which is again decomposed by SVD, C=U S VT Apply SVD to the watermark, W = Uw Sw VwT . Modify the singular values of C matrix by using the singular values of watermark. S1=S+Sw Combine the modified singular values with the orthogonal matrices of C,S2=U S1 V T . ij <= C <=S2 Replace the maximum singular values ij by the modified singular values ij in each block and apply inverse SVD technique to each block B ij <=U ij S ij V ij T Apply inverse DCT to each block of low frequency band Repeat the same procedure for other bands of DWT Then perform IDWT to obtain the watermarked component. Combine the watermarked color component with other components to obtain the watermarked image, A*.

B. Watermark Extraction Algorithm

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. Convert the cover image into RGB color spaces. Apply DWT to decompose the respective color space of a cover image in which watermark is hidden. Divide low frequency band into smaller 4x4 blocks and apply DCT to each block, B*ij . Apply SVD to all DCT transformed block, B ij = U* ij S* ij V* ijT . Extract the *ij maximum singular value in S *ij, the maximum singular value from every block can build a new matrix C*, which can be decomposed further by SVD technique, C*=U* S* V*T . Extract the singular values and compare the difference between watermarked singular values and host image singular values to extract the watermark singular values. Combine the obtained singular values with the orthogonal matrices of watermark to extract the watermark. Repeat the same procedure to extract the watermark from other bands also.

This algorithm combines the properties of DWT, DCT and SVD. DWT is used to decompose the original image in to four band of frequency. DCT technique is applied on each band to collect significant coefficients in which watermark is to be hidden. SVD technique is applied to the watermark and it is hidden into the host image by adding the singular values of host image and singular values of watermark. In this algorithm watermark is added to the SVs of whole image, which may lost due to attacks. To avoid this disadvantage, we propose an approach in which DWT coefficients are converted into 44 blocks. Each block is DCT transformed followed by SVD to get singular values of each block. Maximum Singular value is extracted from each block to form a new matrix called singular block. SVD is applied to the singular block to embed the watermark. Embedding and extraction of watermark is shown in Fig.1. Let A be the cover image. Convert the cover image into RGB color space. Extract any one of the color component. Apply watermark embedding algorithm on each color component.

6.

7.

8.

A. Watermark Embedding Algorithm

1. 2. 3. Convert the cover image into RGB color spaces Apply DWT to decompose any one color space (RGB) of the image in to four bands. Divide low frequency band into smaller blocks of size 4x4 and apply DCT to each block, Bij .

The above mentioned embedding and extraction algorithm is executed by hiding data in low frequency band. Similarly, watermark can be hidden into other frequency band also. Instead of hiding data in RGB color space, it can be extended to YIQ or YUV color space. Proposed algorithm is tested in YIQ color space also because in YIQ color model image content are highly decorrelated.

LL Host image A Color component DWT HL SVD (Uw , Sw , Vw)

LH HH New matrix C= U ij

Block DCT ( Bij ) in all bands

Watermark W

SVD (U, S, V)

SVD(Uij S ij Vij )

Sw S2 = U S1 V S1= S+Sw

= (S

- S )/
* *

SVD (U , S , V ) S2 C ij Concatenate with color other components

W = Uw Sw

Vw

Bij=Uij Sij Vij Watermarked Image A Inverse DCTB ij

*

New matrix * * C = U ij

Watermark W

SVD(U ij S ij V ij)

Inverse DWT

Watermarked color component

Block DCT ( B in all bands

*
ij

LL HL

LH

* *

LL DWT HL

LH

* *

HH

HH

Fig.1 Embedding and extraction of watermark

IV.PERFORMANCE EVALUATION

In this proposed algorithm the Lena image of size 512x512 is taken as test image and the size of watermark is 64 x 64. Selected embedding intensity value is 0.20 for low frequency band and 0.15 for other frequency bands. The original image, watermark and watermarked is shown in Fig 2. Similarly watermarked image and extracted watermarks are shown in Fig.3.

RT
Fig.2 (a)Host image (b) watermark (c) Watermarked image

RT RT RT RT
Fig.3 Extracted watermark from all Frequency Band

The quality of the watermarked image can be measured either subjectively or objectively and it is observed that both subjective and objective quality of watermarked image is good. The PSNR is the objective criteria used to measure the quality of the watermarked image. The Equation for measuring PSNR and NC are shown in (1), (2) and (3) respectively. After embedding the watermark in the host image based on DWT-DCT-SVD, the quality of watermarked image is measured using peak signal to noise ratio (PSNR) value and it is observed that the value is 26.7912. If the watermarked image is not attacked by unknown users then calculated normalized correlation (NC) is 1.Normalized correlation is a factor which is used to measure the similarity of extracted watermark with original watermark. Robustness of watermarked image is tested with various attacks such as rotation , salt and pepper noise, Gaussian noise, image sharpening, histogram equalization, Gaussian blur, color contrast and resizing if images. Extracted watermark from green color space after different kinds of attacks experienced by a watermarked image is shown in Table 1 and Table 2. Watermark can be hidden in any one of the color spaces like red or green or blue of cover image. Results obtained from green color space are compared with the results of red and blue color spaces which are shown in Table 3 , Table 4 and Table 5.

TABLE.1 EXTRACTED WATERMARK FROM GREEN COLOR SPACE

Watermarked image

Extracted wm from LL

Extracted Wm from LH

Extracted Wm from HL

Extracted Wm From HH

Compression

0.9816

0.9807

0.9690

0.9952

Rotation

- 0.6820

0.8996

0.9396

0.9548

Resize

0.8123

0.9926

0.9926

0.9813

Sharpening

0.9950

0.9979

0.9953

0.9982

TABLE.2 EXTRACTED WATERMARK FROM GREEN COLOR SPACE

Extracted wm from LL Watermarked image

Extracted Wm from LH

Extracted Wm from HL

Extracted Wm from HH

Salt and pepper noise

0.9459

0.9661

0.9596

0.9888

Gaussian blur

0.9999

0.9972

0.9787

0.9492

Color contrast

0.3669

0.9349

0.9254

0.9430

Histogram equalization

0.9743

0.9934

0.9917

0.9945

Gaussian noise

0.9911

0.9822

0.9830

0.9815

TABLE.3 CALCULATED CORRELATION VALUE OF EXTRACTED WATERMARK FROM RED COLOR SPACE

V WATERMARKING IN YIQ COLOR SPACE

ATTACKS Salt and peppers noise Gaussian noise Rotation Sharpening Histogram equalization Gaussian blur Color contrast Resize Compression

LL 0.9904 0.9801 -0.4297 0.9990 -0.8481 0.9999 0.9881 0.9492 0.9761

LH 0.9368 0.9853 0.7360 0.9990 0.9896 0.9993 0.9184 0.9963 0.9780

HL 0.9411 0.9893 0.7830 0.9977 0.9927 0.9960 0.9273 0.9932 0.9681

HH 0.9220 0.9837 0.9060 0.9988 0.9901 0.9947 0.9087 0.9779 0.9786

Input image is converted into YIQ color model in which luminance and chrominance components of input image is separated. Watermark is hidden into both luminance and chrominance components and results are tabulated in Table6, Table 7 and Table 8. It is observed that proposed algorithm is robust to rotation attack in YIQ space than RGB space. Thus as per the observation YIQ model is better than RGB model for information hiding.

(1) (2)

NC =
TABLE.4 CALCULATED CORRELATION VALUE OF EXTRACTED WATERMARK FROM GREEN COLOR SPACE

(3)

ATTACKS Salt and peppers noise Gaussian noise Rotation Sharpening Histogram equalization Gaussian blur Color contrast Resize Compression

LL 0.9459 0.9911 -0.6820 0.9950 0.9743 0.9999 0.3667 0.8123 0.9816

LH 0.9661 0.9822 0.8996 0.9979 0.9934 0.9972 0.9349 0.9926 0.9807

HL 0.9596 0.9830 0.9396 0.9953 0.9917 0.9787 0.9254 0.9918 0.9690

HH 0.9888 0.9815 0.9548 0.9982 0.9945 0.9492 0.9430 0.9813 0.9952

TABLE.6 CALCULATED CORRELATION VALUE OF EXTRACTED WATERMARK FROM Y SPACE

ATTACKS Salt and peppers noise Gaussian noise Rotation Sharpening Histogram equalization Gaussian blur Color contrast Resize Compression

LL 0.9882 0.9973 -0.5467 0.9973 0.5817 0.9996 0.8207 0.8782 0.9980

LH 0.9866 0.9822 0.8494 0.9983 0.9903 0.9984 0.9796 0.9937 0.9912

HL 0.9909 0.9852 0.9011 0.9960 0.9893 0.9841 0.9780 0.9931 0.6872

HH 0.9786 0.9823 0.9435 0.9984 0.9928 0.9892 0.9809 0.9818 0.9864

TABLE.5 CALCULATED CORRELATION VALUE OF EXTRACTED WATERMARK FROM BLUE COLOR SPACE

TABLE.7 CALCULATED CORRELATION VALUE OF EXTRACTED WATERMARK FROM I SPACE

ATTACKS ATTACKS Salt and peppers noise Gaussian noise Rotation Sharpening Histogram equalization Gaussian blur Resize Compression LL 0.9942 0.99602 -0.4288 0.9970 0.8240 0.9999 0.9766 0.9740 LH 0.9674 0.9828 0.9007 0.9970 0.9893 0.9938 0.9841 0.9714 HL 0.9718 0.9855 0.9279 0.9945 0.9892 0.9359 0.9834 0.9617 HH 0.9618 0.9814 0.9549 0.9977 0.9908 -0.4488 0.9721 0.9831 Salt and peppers noise Gaussian noise Rotation Sharpening Histogram equalization Gaussian blur Color contrast Resize Compression

LL 0.9972 0.9799 0.3938 0.9989 0.9750 0.9999 0.9818 0.9954 0.9975

LH 0.9733 0.9812 0.9410 0.9984 0.9948 0.9987 0.9599 0.9810 0.9570

HL 0.9740 0.9818 0.9348 0.9979 0.9949 0.9987 0.9521 0.9765 0.9533

HH 0.9703 0.9830 0.9640 0.9989 0.9961 0.9931 0.9675 0.9717 0.9850

TABLE.8 CALCULATED CORRELATION VALUE OF EXTRACTED WATERMARK FROM Q SPACE

REFERENCES
[1] F. Hartung and M. Kutter, "Multimedia Watermarking Techniques," in proc. of the IEEE, vol. 87, no. 7, pp. 10791107, July 1999. Feng Liu, Yangguang Liu,A watermarking algorithm for digital image based on DCT and SVD, Congress on Image and Signal Processing 2008.

ATTACKS Salt and peppers noise Gaussian noise Rotation Sharpening Histogram equalization Gaussian blur Color contrast Resize Compression

LL 0.9958 0.9698 0.8890 0.9979 0.9934 0.9999 0.9858 0.9951 0.9994

LH 0.9793 0.9813 0.9646 0.9986 0.9916 0.9981 0.9693 0.9769 0.9846

HL 0.9802 0.9822 0.9612 0.9984 0.9919 0.9965 0.9614 0.9810 0.9850

HH 0.9768 0.9819 0.9693 0.9990 0.9931 0.9924 0.9804 0.9707 0.9866

[2]

[3]

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[4]

VI CONCLUSION

1. 2. 3.

4.

5. 6.

In proposed algorithm the features of DWT-DCTSVD techniques are combined. Embedding can be carried out in all frequencies without visible distortion in cove image Algorithm is found to be robust against many attacks as per the results, classified as non-blind watermarking algorithm, which can be used for copyright protection application where robustness is very important. Watermark inserted in low frequencies are resistant to certain types of attacks, and watermarks embedded in high frequencies are resistant to certain type of attacks. Thus based on applications low, middle or high frequency band is selected for hiding watermark. Similarity measure shows that our proposed algorithm outperforms in YIQ color space rather than RGB color space. Proposed algorithm is not robust to rotation attack in RGB color space but robust in YIQ color spaces. Thus our future work is to make algorithm robust to rotation attack in RGB color space.

[5]

[6]

[7]

[8]

[9]

[10] Xinzhong Zhu, Jianmin Zhao and Huiying Xu,A Digital watermarking Algorithm and implementation based on improved SVD, The 18th International conference on pattern recognition, 2006.