Reversible watermarking based on intelligent coefficient selection and integer wavelet transform

Abstract

This work presents a lossless data hiding method using integer wavelet trans-form and Genetic Programming (GP) based intelligent coefficient selection scheme. By exploiting information about the amplitude of the wavelet coefficient and the type of the sub band, GP is used to evolve a mathematical function in view of the payload size and imperceptibility of the marked image. The evolved mathematical function acts like a com-pact but robust coefficient map for the reversible watermarking approach. Information is embedded into the least significant bit-plane of those high frequency wavelet coefficients that are intelligently selected by the Genetic Programming module. The proposed ap-proach does not only extract the hidden information, but also recovers the original image content. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of this scheme in terms of payload and imperceptibility. © 2009 ISSN.