Hyperanalytic wavelet-based watermarking [articol]

Abstract

In this paper we present a new technique for watermarking in the hyperanalytic wavelet domain. This has the advantage of better directional selectivity and shift invariance compared to the classical wavelet filter. The watermark is inserted into all levels of decomposition using a perceptual mask conceived by the authors. We compare this technique with two systems in the DWT domain, and show its superiority. We study the resistance of the three watermarking systems against various signal processing attacks and the recently proposed local desynchronization attack (DA), namely the local permutation with cancelation and duplication (LPCD) DAs. For LPCD DA, simulation results show that while the attacked watermarked images are visually similar with the watermarked ones, the correlation or similarly the Peak Signal-to-Noise ratio, between them is decreased, indicating the effectiveness of the attack. All three methods successfully detect the watermark, with superiority from the hyperanalytic wavelet domain. This leads to the conclusion that the Hyperanalytic Wavelet Transform (HWT) is well suited for increasing the payload and robustness.