Dual watermarking technique with multiple biometric watermarks

Abstract

In order to improve the robustness of the watermarking algorithm, a dual watermarking method is proposed to prove copyright ownership. Visible watermarking is important for protecting online resources from unauthorized reproduction. However robust, visible watermarks are vulnerable to illegal removal and other common signal processing and geometric attacks. Multiple invisible watermarks can enhance the protection of the visibly watermarked image. When the ownership of tampered image is in question, the invisible watermark can be extracted to provide appropriate ownership information. We have proposed dual watermarking scheme with multiple biometric watermarks in which it embeds speech and face biometric traits of owner invisibly and lastly offline signature is overlaid translucently on image. Before embedding, speech is compressed using Linear Predictive Coding (LPC) and Gabor face is created from face biometric trait. All three watermarks Gabor face, LPC coefficients and offline signature are the biometric characteristics of the owner and hence they are highly related with copyright holder. The proposed scheme is robust enough, Gabor face and LPC coefficients can be extracted from the signature marked image or even from the tampered image from which signature is removed illegally or legally. As multiple watermarks are embedded at least one watermark survives under different attacks. It can find application for joint ownership or to address single ownership multiple times. © 2014 Indian Academy of Sciences.