Independent component analysis in the watermarking of digital images

Abstract

The author proposes a new solution to the robust water-marking of digital images. This approach uses Independent Component Analysis (ICA) to project the image into a basis with its components as statistically independent as possible. The watermark is then introduced in this representation of the space. Thus, the change of basis is the key of the steganography problem. The method is improved with standard techniques such as spread-spreading mark generation, perceptual masking, and holographic properties. Some results are included to illustrate that the performance of the ICA watermarking is close to that of well-known methods. © Springer-Verlag 2004.