Secured color image watermarking technique in DWT-DCT domain

TL;DR

This paper presents a secure, robust color image watermarking method using DWT-DCT in YIQ space, enhancing security with multiple techniques and demonstrating high fidelity and resilience against various attacks.

Contribution

The paper introduces a multilayer watermarking approach combining DWT, DCT, and color space conversions with multiple security measures, improving robustness and security over existing methods.

Findings

High PSNR value of 63.9988 for Lena image at flexing factor k=1

Maximum normalized correlation of 0.9781 in Q color space at k=4

Robustness against scaling, compression, and rotation attacks

Abstract

The multilayer secured DWT-DCT and YIQ color space based image watermarking technique with robustness and better correlation is presented here. The security levels are increased by using multiple pn sequences, Arnold scrambling, DWT domain, DCT domain and color space conversions. Peak signal to noise ratio and Normalized correlations are used as measurement metrics. The 512x512 sized color images with different histograms are used for testing and watermark of size 64x64 is embedded in HL region of DWT and 4x4 DCT is used. 'Haar' wavelet is used for decomposition and direct flexing factor is used. We got PSNR value is 63.9988 for flexing factor k=1 for Lena image and the maximum NC 0.9781 for flexing factor k=4 in Q color space. The comparative performance in Y, I and Q color space is presented. The technique is robust for different attacks like scaling, compression, rotation etc.