Digital Watermarking For Multimedia Protection

CHI-MAN PUN and CHI-PIO TOU

Department of Computer and Information Science

University of Macau
Macau S.A.R.

ABSTRACT: - A novel blind digital watermarking scheme for multimedia protection using wavelet packet
decomposition is proposed in this paper. The original image is decomposed into wavelet coefficients using a
full wavelet packet decomposition. For minimal loss in image fidelity, the watermark is embedded in those
wavelet coefficients with highest magnitudes except for those in the lowest frequency channel. The watermark
detection is achieved without use of the original image by computing a similarity measure between the input
watermark and the wavelet coefficients of the attack image. Experimental results show that the proposed
method is robust against the common image/signal processing operations.

Key Words: blind digital watermarking, wavelet packets, multimedia protection

1. INTRODUCTION like lossy compression. Besides, altering the

With the rapid development of digital multimedia
technology, protecting the copyright of digital media
has become more and more important. Different
digital watermarking schemes have been proposed to
address the issue of multimedia copyright protection.
In general, the watermarking schemes can be
classified into two main categories: spatial domain
approach or frequency domain approach. Most of
the early research on digital watermarking employs
the spatial domain approach and concentrates on the
imperceptibility [1-7]. However, these techniques
have relative low-bit capacity and are not robust
enough to lossy compression and many other signal
processing operations such as geometric distortion
and cropping. Recently many robust watermarking
schemes using the frequency domain approach have
been proposed. Most of these approaches are based
on discrete Fourier transform (DFT) [8-11], cosine
transform (DCT) [12-18] or wavelet transform
(DWT) [19-29]. Since most of the signal processing
operations can be well characterized in frequency
domain, most of these approaches embed
watermarks in low or middle frequency coefficients
and provide the superior robustness to various
attacks like lossy compression, linear or non-linear
filtering, scaling, cropping, and collusion, etc.
However, human visual system (HVS) is more
sensitive to lower frequency noise while high
frequency coefficients are vulnerable to be
suppressed by common signal processing operations
significant frequency coefficients can severely
degrade the image quality.
In order to avoid the image quality degradation, Cox
et al [12] employed the spread spectrum for
embedding watermarks and suggested inserting the
watermark, which is a set of independent and
identical distributed sequences drawn from Gaussian
distribution, to only a small fraction of the number
of significant frequency coefficients of the image.
However, this scheme requires the original image
for watermark extraction, that is not preferable for
resolving rightful ownership [30, 31]. Piva et al [14]
embedded the watermarks in the middle frequency
of DCT of the images. The original image is not
required for watermark extraction. However, a larger
number of coefficients are required for a significant
detector response. Hsu and Wu [22] employed
visually recognizable patterns as watermarks which
are embedded in middle frequency coefficients of
DWT of the images due to the fact that the human
visual system (HVS) inherently performs
multiresolution structure. However, the original
image is also required for watermark extraction.
In general, most of the existing methods require
either the original image or large number of
coefficients for watermark extraction. In this paper,
an effective and blind wavelet-based scheme is
proposed for image watermarking using wavelet
packet transform. The original image is decomposed
into wavelet coefficients using a full wavelet packet
decomposition. For minimal loss in image fidelity,
the watermark is embedded in those wavelet
coefficients with highest magnitudes except for
those in the lowest frequency channel. The
watermark detection is achieved without use of the
original image by computing a similarity measure
between the input watermark and the wavelet
coefficients of the attack image. The outline of this
paper is organized as follows. In next section, we
briefly introduce and review the standard 2-D
wavelet packets decomposition techniques. In
section III, we present our proposed scheme for
embedding and extracting watermarks. The
experiment results for the detection responses
performance and robustness of our proposed method
to various attacks are presented in Section IV.
Finally, conclusions are drawn in Section V.
2. DISCRETE WAVELET PACKET
TRANSFORM
The 2-D discrete wavelet packet transform (DWPT)
is a generalization of 2D discrete wavelet transform
(DWT) that offers a richer range of possibilities for
image analysis. In 2D-DWT analysis, an image is
split into an approximation and three detail images.
The approximation image is then itself split into a
second-level approximation and detail images, and
the process is recursively repeated. So there are n+1
possible ways to decompose or encode the image for
an n-level decomposition. In 2D-DWPT analysis,
the three details images as well as the approximation
image can also be split. So there are 4n different
ways to encode the image, which provide a better
tool for image analysis. The standard 2D-DWPT
can be described by a pair of quadrature mirror
filters (QMF) H and G [32]. The filter H is a low-
pass filter with a finite impulse response denoted by
h(n) . And the high-pass G with a finite impulse
response is defined by:
g (n) = (−1) n h(1 − n) , for all n (2.1)
The low-pass filter is assumed to satisfy the
following conditions for orthonormal representation:
∑ h(n)h(n + 2 j ) = 0 , for all
n
j≠0 (2.2)
∑ h( n)
n
2
=1 (2.3)
∑ h(n)g (n + 2 j ) = 0 , for all j
n
(2.4)
The 2D wavelet packet decomposition (forward 2D-
DWPT) of an N × M discrete image x up to level
p+1 ( p ≤ min(log 2 ( N ), log 2 ( M )) , p ∈ ) is
recursively defined in terms of the coefficients of
level p as follows:
C4pk+,(1i , j ) = ∑∑ h(m)h(n)Ckp,( m+ 2i ,n + 2 j ) (2.5)
m n
C4pk++11,(i , j ) = ∑∑ h(m) g (n)Ckp,( m + 2i ,n + 2 j ) (2.6)
m n
C p +1
4 k + 2,( i , j ) = ∑∑ g (m)h(n)Ckp,( m + 2i ,n + 2 j ) (2.7)
m n
C p +1
4 k + 3,( i , j ) = ∑∑ g (m) g (n)Ckp,( m+ 2i ,n + 2 j ) (2.8)
m n
i , j ) = x( i , j ) is given by the intensity levels
0
where C0,(
of the image x.
In practice, the image x has only a finite number of
pixels. Different methods such as symmetric,
periodic or zero padding could be used for the
boundary handling. At each step, we decompose the
image Ckp into four quarter-size images
C4pk+1 , C4pk++11 , C4pk++12 and C4pk++13 . This decomposition
algorithm can also be illustrated by the block
diagram in Fig. 1. The rows of the image Ckp are
first convolved with a one-dimensional filter and
every other row is retained. Then the columns of the
resulting images are convolved with another one-
dimensional filter and every other column is
retained.
 column
s
rows G 1↓ 2 C4pk+1
Test Image
G 2 ↓1
p +1
H 1↓ 2 C 4 k +1
Wavelet Packet
Ckp Transform

G 1↓ 2 C4pk++12
H 2 ↓1
Wavelet
H 1↓ 2 C4pk++13 Secret Key Coefficients

2 ↓1 keep one column out of two

Gauassian
Watermark
Random Vector
Extraction
1↓ 2 keep one row out of two Generation

X convolve with filter X Y = { y1 , y2 ,… , yK } T * = {t1* , t2* ,… , t K *}

sim(Y , T * ) > 0?
P
Fig. 1. Decomposition of a discrete image C k into four
P +1 P +1 P +1 P +1
quarter-size images C 4k ,C 4 k +1 , C 4k +2 and C4 k +3 by
using the conjugate filters H and G. Fig.3 Procedure of detecting a digital watermark in a
test image.

Secret Key Original Image

3. DIGITAL WATERMARKING
USING WAVELET PACKET
Gauassian
Wavelet Packet
Random Vector
Transform
Generation The procedure of embedding a digital watermark
into the original image is depicted in Fig. 2. The
X = {x1 , x2 ,… , xK } T = {t1 , t2 ,… , t K } MxN original image is decomposed adaptively into
wavelet coefficients by a 2D discrete wavelet packet
Embedding [32] up to level p = min(log 2 ( N ), log 2 ( M )) / 2 . In
Watermarks
order to have better perceptual invisibility and
Watermarked
robustness to various attacks, the first K highest
wavelet coefficients
wavelet coefficients are selected to generate a vector
Inverse Wavelet
T = {t1 , t2 ,… , t K } from all channels except the
Packet Transform
lowest frequency channel. Then, a watermark
X = {x1 , x2 ,… , xK } generated by an independent
Watermarked Image
and identical distributed pseudo-random sequence
drawn from Gaussian distribution with zero mean
Fig.2 Procedure of embedding a digital watermark into
and unit variance of length K is embedded into the
the original image. vector T to obtain a new vector
T ' = {t1 ', t2 ',… , t K '} according to the following
rule.

ti' = ti + α ti xi (3.1)

where i = 1,… , K . This new vector T’ is inserted

back into the corresponding positions of the wavelet
packet decomposition. Finally, the inverse discrete
wavelet packet transform is applied to obtain the h(0) 0.01885858 h(10) -0.02082962
watermarked image.
h(1) 0.13306109 h(11) 0.02348491
h(2) 0.37278754 h(12) 0.00255022
The procedure of detecting a digital watermark in a
h(3) 0.48681406 h(13) -0.00758950
test image under attack is depicted in Fig. 3. The
attacked MxN test image is first decomposed into h(4) 0.19881887 h(14) 0.00098666
wavelet coefficients by the 2D discrete wavelet h(5) -0.17666810 h(15) 0.00140884
packet transform up to
level p = min(log 2 ( N ), log 2 ( M )) / 2 . Then, the h(6) -0.13855494 h(16) -0.00048497
first K highest wavelet coefficients are selected to h(7) 0.09006372 h(17) -0.00008235
generate a vector T * = {t1* , t2* ,… , t K *} from all h(8) 0.06580149 h(18) 0.00006618
channels except the lowest frequency channel. The h(9) -0.05048329 h(19) -0.00000938
extracted wavelet coefficient vector is used to
compute the similarity measure to the given Table 1 20-tap Daubechies wavelet transform filter
coefficients
watermark Y = { y1 , y2 ,… , yK } generated by the
input secrete key. Without use of the original image,
the similarity measure sim(Y , T * ) is defined as
follows:

K
α2 K *
sim(Y , T * ) = ∑ ( yi ti* ) 2 − ∑ (ti + α ti* yi ) 2 (3.2)
i =1 β i =1

The existence of the given watermark

Y = { y1 , y2 ,… , yK } in the test image is determined
whether the similarity measure sim(Y , T * ) is
greater than zero or not.

Fig.4 (a) The original Lena image; (b) Watermarked

Lena image, PSNR=43.33 dB.

4. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS 40

30
A number of experiments have been carried out to
evaluate the performance of our proposed method 20
Detector Response

using the common 512x512 Lena image. For these

experiments, we have chosen K=1000, α = 0.1 and 10

β = 6 , and employed the 20-tap orthonormal

0
Daubechies wavelet [33] (where the coefficients of
the low-pass filter h are listed in Table 1) for the
-10
wavelet packet decomposition.
-20
0 500 1000 1500 2000 2500 3000
Watermarks

Fig.5 Detector response of 3000 randomly generated

watermarks. Only watermark number 1000 is correct.
Attack PSNR Sim(Y,T*) Further work can be focused to investigate the
proposed method for geometric attack and image
3x3 median filter 35.53 8.9 normalization.
5x5 media filter 33.21 8.3
Gaussian Noise (0,0.01) 37.68 9.5
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