access icon free Blind curvelet watermarking method for high-quality images

© The Institution of Engineering and Technology
Received 14/03/2017, Published 22/08/2017

The proposed method is a watermarking method for high-quality images that achieves high invisibility and good robustness using a curvelet domain. Recently, there has been a demand for a watermarking technique that does not impair image quality, as interest in high-quality images has increased. To meet this demand, the authors adopted a method of minimising the watermark-embedding energy by using the multi-directional decomposition technique, curvelet transformation. However, if a watermark is inserted into the curvelet domain with the watermarking technique of the conventional domains, it is distorted during the forward and inverse curvelet transform. To solve this problem, they designed a watermarking method by considering the characteristics of the curvelet filter. By minimising the watermark distortion caused by the curvelet transform, high robustness is achieved with small watermarking energy. The proposed method shows very good invisibility and is difficult to distinguish the original. In terms of robustness, the correlation value increased by >80% and BER decreased by >20% compared with previous methods.

Inspec keywords: inverse transforms; distortion; curvelet transforms; image watermarking; filtering theory

Other keywords: curvelet filter; forward curvelet transform; BER; correlation value; high-quality images; multidirectional decomposition technique; watermark distortion minimisation; blind curvelet watermarking method; curvelet transformation; image quality; watermark-embedding energy minimisation method; curvelet domain; inverse curvelet transform

Subjects: Data security; Filtering methods in signal processing; Integral transforms; Image and video coding; Computer vision and image processing techniques; Integral transforms

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