DWT–SVD-based watermarking scheme using optimization technique

Abstract

In this paper, a watermarking scheme has been proposed for embedding a digital watermark in images. The process of inserting a watermark is carried out in invisible mode. The proposed watermarking algorithm utilizes particle swarm optimization technique to obtain the scaling and embedding factors which are required to carry out the watermarking process, thus the proposed methodology is adaptive. The embedding and extraction processes are carried out using discrete wavelet transform and singular value decomposition (SVD) techniques. The proposed scheme finds application in curbing the copyright infringement of images by inserting an invisible watermark in the image, which can be colour or greyscale. The watermarked images are tested with various attacks in order to ensure the robustness of the proposed technique. The results obtained are tabulated to verify and prove the efficiency of the proposed technique.