This paper proposes an improved method of reversible data hiding with increased capacity. The conventional method determines whether to embed a data bit in an image block according to the statistics of pixels in that block. Some images have pixel statistics that are inadequate for data hiding, and seldom or never have data embedded in them. The proposed method modulates the statistics invertibility to overcome such disadvantages, and is also able to improve the quality of the image containing the hidden data using block-adaptive modulation. Simulationresults show the effectiveness of the proposed method.

This letter suggests a novel high capacity robust audio watermarking algorithm by using the high frequency band of the wavelet decomposition, for which the human auditory system (HAS) is not very sensitive to alteration. The main idea is to divide the high frequency band into frames and then, for embedding, the wavelet samples are changed based on the average of the relevant frame. The experimental results show that the method has very high capacity (about 5.5 kbps), without significant perceptual distortion (ODG in [-1, 0] and SNR about 33 dB) and provides robustness against common audio signal processing such as added noise, filtering, echo and MPEG compression (MP3).

This paper proposes a novel robust audio watermarking algorithm to embed data and extract it in a bit-exact manner based on changing the magnitudes of the FFT spectrum. The key point is selecting a frequency band for embedding based on the comparison between the original and the MP3 compressed/decompressed signal and on a suitable scaling factor. The experimental results show that the method has a very high capacity (about 5 kbps), without significant perceptual distortion (ODG about -0.25) and provides robustness against common audio signal processing such as added noise, filtering and MPEG compression (MP3). Furthermore, the proposed method has a larger capacity (number of embedded bits to number of host bits rate) than recent image data hiding methods.

This paper proposes a novel reversible image authentication method that does not memorize the parameters for extracting embedded authentication data from an image. The proposed method once distorts an image to hide data for authentication into the image, it recovers the original image from the distorted image unless tamper is applied to the image, i.e., reversible. By comparing extracted data and data generated from the restored image, this method detects image tampering and further localizes tampered regions by the unit of block. The proposed method extracts hidden data without memorization of parameters used in its algorithm. This feature makes the proposed method practical. Whereas any method memorizing parameters faces severe problems with storage and management of parameters, according to the increase in the number of memorized parameters that is caused by serving accurate tamper localization and/or by applying itself to a huge number of image collection, e.g., video sequences. Simulation results show the effectiveness of the proposed method.

This paper proposes a contourlet based adaptive watermarking for color images (CAWCI). A color image with RGB space is firstly converted to its YCbCr space equivalent; a luminance (Y) image and two chrominance (Cb and Cr) images are subsequently transformed into contourlet domain respectively; the watermark is embedded into the contourlet coefficients of the largest detail subbands of three images lastly. On the one hand, the embedded watermark is imperceptible because contrast sensitivity function and watermark visual mask are adopted in our CAWCI. On the other hand, the embedded watermark is very robust due to the spread specialty of Laplacian pyramid (LP) in contourlet transform. The corresponding watermarking detection algorithm is proposed to decide whether the watermark is present or not by exploiting the unique transform structure of LP. Experimental results show the validity of CAWCI in terms of both watermarking invisibility and watermarking robustness.

In this letter, we propose new digital audio watermarking methods using interval wavelet decomposition. We develop not only non-blind type method, but also blind one. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed methods give a watermarked audio clip of better quality and are robust against some attacks.

There has been a wide-ranging discussion on the issue of content copyright protection in digital content distribution systems. Fiat and Tassa proposed the framework of dynamic traitor tracing. Their framework requires dynamic computation transactions according to the real-time responses of the pirate, and it presumes real-time observation of content redistribution. Therefore, it cannot be simply utilized in an application where such an assumption is not valid. In this paper, we propose a new scheme that provides the advantages of dynamic traitor tracing schemes and also overcomes their problems.

Because of an increasing number of security cameras, it is crucial to establish a system that protects the privacy of objects in the recorded images. To this end, we propose a framework of image processing and data hiding for security monitoring and privacy protection. First, we state the requirements of the proposed monitoring systems and suggest possible implementation that satisfies those requirements. The underlying concept of our proposed framework is as follows: (1) in the recorded images, the objects whose privacy should be protected are deteriorated by appropriate image processing; (2) the original objects are encrypted and watermarked into the output image, which is encoded using an image compression standard; (3) real-time processing is performed such that no future frame is required to generate on output bitstream. It should be noted that in this framework, anyone can observe the decoded image that includes the deteriorated objects that are unrecognizable or invisible. On the other hand, for crime investigation, this system allows a limited number of users to observe the original objects by using a special viewer that decrypts and decodes the watermarked objects with a decoding password. Moreover, the special viewer allows us to select the objects to be decoded and displayed. We provide an implementation example, experimental results, and performance evaluations to support our proposed framework.

We propose an asymmetric fragile watermarking technique that uses a number theoretic transform (NTT). Signature data is extracted from a watermarked image by determining correlation functions that are computed using the NTT. The effectiveness of the proposed method is evaluated by simulated detection of altering.

The code length of Tardos's collusion-secure fingerprint code is of theoretically minimal order with respect to the number of adversarial users (pirates). However, the constant factor should be further reduced for practical implementation. In this article, we improve the tracing algorithm of Tardos's code and propose a 2-secure and short random fingerprint code, which is secure against collusion attacks by two pirates. Our code length is significantly shorter than that of Tardos's code and its tracing error probability is practically small.

In this letter we propose a robust detection algorithm for audio watermarking for copyright protection. The watermark is embedded in the time domain of an audio signal by the normally used spread spectrum technique. The scheme of detection is an improvement of the conventional correlation detector. A high-pass filter is applied along with the linear prediction error filter for whitening the audio signal and an adaptive threshold is chosen for decision comparing. Experimental results show that our detection algorithm outperforms the conventional one not only because it improves the robustness to normal attacks but also because it can provide the robustness to time-invariant pitch-scale modification.

For the digital watermarking patchwork algorithm originally given by Bender et al., this paper proposes two improvements applicable to audio watermarking. First, the watermark embedding strength is psychoacoustically adapted, using the Bark frequency scale. Second, whereas previous approaches leave the samples that do not correspond to the data untouched, in this paper, these are modified to reduce the probability of misdetection, a method called full index embedding. In simulations, the proposed combination of these two proposed methods has higher resistance to a variety of attacks than prior algorithms.

In this paper, we proposed a novel entropy-based image watermarking method in wavelet domain. Unlike traditional entropy, we use the normalized energy instead of the probability which is called energy-based entropy (EBE). Based on EBE, the watermark can be embedded robustly and imperceptibly. In our proposed method, the wavelet-trees are grouped into super-trees. Then each super-tree is also divided into five sub-blocks. According to the watermark bit state, the EBE of each sub-block will be modified respectively. In an experiment, three images (Lenna, Goldhill and Peppers) are chosen for evaluating the performance. The PSNR of these watermarked images are 44.039, 43.51 and 43.67. Compared with Wang et al.[18], it greatly increases the PSNR, by about 5.8, 4.8 and 3.9 dB respectively. For the consideration of the capacity for embedding, the maximum number of watermark bits is also increased. The experimental results show that the proposed entropy-based watermarking method performs well in JPEG compression, filtering (Gaussian filter, median filter and sharpen) and geometrical attacks (pixel shift and rotation). In addition, it is also very robust to against the multiple watermark attack.

This paper proposes a novel MP3 watermarking method which is applicable to a mobile terminal with limited computational resources. Considering that in most cases the embedded information is copyright information or metadata, which should be extracted before playing back audio contents, the watermark detection process should be executed at high speed. However, when conventional methods are used with a mobile terminal, it takes a considerable amount of time to detect a digital watermark. This paper focuses on scalefactor manipulation to enable high speed watermark embedding/detection for MP3 audio and also proposes the manipulation method which minimizes audio quality degradation adaptively. Evaluation tests showed that the proposed method is capable of embedding 3 bits/frame information without degrading audio quality and detecting it at very high speed. Finally, this paper describes application examples for authentication with a digital signature.

This paper is to propose a digital watermarking to protect the ownership of a video content which is compressed by H.264/AVC main profile. This scheme intends to be performed during the CABAC (Context-based Adaptive Binary Arithmetic Coding) process which is the entropy coding of the main profile. It uses the contexts extracted during the context modeling process of CABAC to position the watermark bits by simply checking the context values and determining the coefficients. The watermarking process is also as simple as replacing the watermark bit with the LSB (Least Significant Bit) of the corresponding coefficient to be watermarked. Experimental results from applying this scheme and attacking in various ways such as blurring, sharpening, cropping, Gaussian noise addition, and geometrical modification showed that the watermark embedded by this scheme has very high imperceptibility and robustness to the attacks. Thus, we expect it to be used as a good watermarking scheme, especially in the area that the watermarking should be performed during the compression process with requiring minimal amount of process for watermarking.

Wavelet tree based watermarking algorithms are using the wavelet coefficient energy difference for copyright protection and ownership verification. WTQ (Wavelet Tree Quantization) algorithm is the representative technique using energy difference for watermarking. According to the cryptanalysis on WTQ, the watermark embedded in the protected image can be removed successfully. In this paper, we present a novel differential energy watermarking algorithm based on the wavelet tree group modulation structure, i.e. WTGM (Wavelet Tree Group Modulation). The wavelet coefficients of host image are divided into disjoint super trees (each super tree containing two sub-super trees). The watermark is embedded in the relatively high-frequency components using the group strategy such that energies of sub-super trees are close. The employment of wavelet tree structure, sum-of-subsets and positive/negative modulation effectively improve the drawbacks of the WTQ scheme for its insecurity. The integration of the HVS (Human Visual System) for WTGM provides a better visual effect of the watermarked image. The experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of our algorithm in terms of robustness and imperceptibility.

This work addresses the issue on the robustness performance in M-ary quantization watermarking. If the encoded messages are arranged in the order of Gray Code such that adjacent messages differ at only one bit, this work demonstrates the robustness will be substantially improved in low DNR scenarios. Furthermore, the two-bit quantization watermarking can outperform the LUT approach which also provides the robustness improvement in the high-noisy environments.

Robustness and invisibility are two contrary constraints for robust invisible watermarking. Instead of the conventional strategy with human visual system (HVS) model, this paper presents a content-adaptive approach to further optimize the constraint between them. To reach this target, the entropy-based and integrated HVS (IHVS) based measures are constructed so as to adaptively choose the suitable components for watermark insertion and detection. Such a kind of scheme potentially gives rise to synchronization problem between the encoder and decoder under the framework of blind watermarking, which is then solved by incorporating the repeat-accumulate (RA) code with erasure and error correction. Moreover, a new hidden Markov model (HMM) based detector in wavelet domain is introduced to reduce the computation complexity and is further developed into a posterior one to avoid the transmission of HMM parameters with only a little sacrifice of detection performance. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm can obtain considerable improvement in robustness performance with the same distortion as the traditional one.

This letter presents a novel robust video watermarking scheme based on space-time interest points. These points correspond to inherent structures of the video so that they can be used as synchronization signals for watermark embedding and extraction. In the proposed scheme, local regions are generated using the space-time interest points, and the watermark is embedded into all the regions by quantization. It is a blind scheme and the watermark can be extracted from any position of the video. Experimental results show that the watermark is invisible and it can robustly survive traditional signal processing attacks and video-oriented attacks.

This paper presents a watermarking method for the copyright protection and the prevention of illegal copying of mobile 3D contents. The proposed method embeds the copyright information and user's phone number into the spatial and encryption domains of the mobile animation data using the Buyer-Seller watermarking protocol. In addition, a user operation key is also inserted, so only the authorized user can play the 3D animation game on the mobile device. The proposed method was implemented using a mobile animation tool, and experimental results verified that the proposed method was capable of copyright protection and preventing illegal copying, as the watermarks were also accurately extracted in the case of geometrical attacks, such as noise addition, data accuracy variation, and data up/down scaling.