Robust Image Watermarking Based on Hybrid IWT-DCT-SVD

Abstract

The digital technology development and the ease of sharing and modifying content, authentication of digital information and copyright protection have become crucial. Digital watermarking is one of the best promising solutions for this purpose, with the ability to insert hidden information (watermark) into digital media. This study presents a fine-tuning to hybrid image watermarking schemes based on a combination of Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT), Integer Wavelet Transform (IWT), and Singular Value Decomposition (SVD), the focus is for color watermark images and color host images. The main focus is on increasing the robustness of the watermarked imaged and significant imperceptibility. Fine tuning is done through a multi-block embedding strategy within the IWT-DCT-SVD domain. The proposed methods evaluated using image quality metrics Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratio (PSNR), and Structural Similarity Index Measure (SSIM), as well as endurance under a variety of common digital attacks including JPEG compression, Gaussian noise, Salt & Pepper noise, median filtering, rotation, and scaling. The results of the experiment showed that the multi-block fine-tuning approach significantly improved the robustness of the watermark while maintaining host image good visual quality.