DHT domain digital watermarking with low loss in image informations

Abstract

The paper proposes a digital image watermarking scheme that selects regions for data embedding based on information measure. Two valued kernels of Hadamard transformation cause smaller image information change during embedding compared to other transform domains such as DCT (discrete cosine transform), DFT (discrete Fourier transform), Fourier-Mellin and wavelet-based embedding. Moreover, the usage of Hadamard transform as signal decomposition tool offers advantages in terms of simpler implementation, low computation cost and high resiliency at low quality compression considering both JPEG and JPEG 2000 framework. Compression resiliency is further improved using adaptive negative modulation. These facts are validated comparing the performance with some other existing watermarking schemes as well as DCT domain implementation of the proposed scheme. © 2009 Elsevier GmbH. All rights reserved.