Rotation-, scale-, and translation-resilient public watermarking for images

Many electronic watermarks for still images and video content are sensitive to geometric distortions. For example, simple rotation, scaling, and/or translation (RST) of an image can prevent detection of a public watermark. In this paper, we propose a watermarking algorithm that is robust to RST distortions. The watermark is embedded into a 1-dimensional signal obtained by first taking the Fourier transform of the image, resampling the Fourier magnitudes into log-polar coordinates, and then summing a function of those magnitudes along the log-radius axis. If the image is rotated, the resulting signal is cyclically shifted. If it is scaled, the signal is multiplied by some value. And if the image is translated, the signal is unaffected. We can therefore compensate for rotation with a simple search, and for scaling by using the correlation coefficient for the detection metric. False positive results on a database of 10,000 images are reported. Robustness results on a database of 2,000 images are described. It is shown that the watermark is robust to rotation, scale and translation. In addition, the algorithm shows resistance to cropping.

[1]  Jeffrey A. Bloom,et al.  Computing the Probability of False Watermark Detection , 1999, Information Hiding.

[2]  Thierry Pun,et al.  Rotation, scale and translation invariant spread spectrum digital image watermarking , 1998, Signal Process..

[3]  Peter M. J. Rongen,et al.  Digital image watermarking by salient point modification: practical results , 1999, Electronic Imaging.

[4]  Wenjun Zeng,et al.  Image-adaptive watermarking using visual models , 1998, IEEE J. Sel. Areas Commun..

[5]  D. Casasent,et al.  Position, rotation, and scale invariant optical correlation. , 1976, Applied optics.

[6]  C. Morandi,et al.  Registration of Translated and Rotated Images Using Finite Fourier Transforms , 1987, IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence.

[7]  D. Casasent,et al.  New optical transforms for pattern recognition , 1977, Proceedings of the IEEE.

[8]  Jürgen Altmann,et al.  On the Digital Implementation of the Rotation-Invariant Fourier-Mellin Transform , 1987, J. Inf. Process. Cybern..

[9]  Ton Kalker,et al.  Video watermarking system for broadcast monitoring , 1999, Electronic Imaging.

[10]  Jürgen Altmann,et al.  A Fast Correlation Method for Scale-and Translation-Invariant Pattern Recognition , 1984, IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence.

[11]  Claude E. Shannon,et al.  Channels with Side Information at the Transmitter , 1958, IBM J. Res. Dev..

[12]  Cornelius W. A. M. van Overveld,et al.  Digital watermarking by geometric warping , 1998, Proceedings 1998 International Conference on Image Processing. ICIP98 (Cat. No.98CB36269).

[13]  Ingemar J. Cox,et al.  Review of watermarking and the importance of perceptual modeling , 1997, Electronic Imaging.

[14]  Gabriela Csurka,et al.  A Bayesian Approach to Affine Transformation Resistant Image and Video Watermarking , 1999, Information Hiding.

[15]  Stefano Alliney.  Digital Analysis of Rotated Images , 1993, IEEE Trans. Pattern Anal. Mach. Intell..

[16]  Ingemar J. Cox,et al.  Secure spread spectrum watermarking for multimedia , 1997, IEEE Trans. Image Process..

[17]  Feng Lin,et al.  Towards absolute invariants of images under translation, rotation, and dilation , 1993, Pattern Recognit. Lett..

[18]  Ming-Kuei Hu,et al.  Visual pattern recognition by moment invariants , 1962, IRE Trans. Inf. Theory.

[19]  Ronald N. Bracewell,et al.  The Fourier Transform and Its Applications , 1966 .

[20]  Ingemar J. Cox,et al.  Watermarking as communications with side information , 1999, Proc. IEEE.

[21]  H. Arsenault,et al.  Experiments on pattern recognition using invariant Fourier-Mellin descriptors. , 1986, Journal of the Optical Society of America. A, Optics and image science.

[22]  Shih-Fu Chang,et al.  Distortion Modeling and Invariant Extraction for Digital Image Print-and-Scan Process , 2000 .

[23]  Sushil Jajodia,et al.  Recovery of Watermarks from Distorted Images , 1999, Information Hiding.

[24]  Harry Wechsler,et al.  2-D Invariant Object Recognition Using Distributed Associative Memory , 1988, IEEE Trans. Pattern Anal. Mach. Intell..

[25]  Markus G. Kuhn,et al.  Attacks on Copyright Marking Systems , 1998, Information Hiding.

[26]  M. McGuire.  An image registration technique for recovering rotation, scale and translation parameters , 1998 .

[27]  Martin Kutter,et al.  Watermarking resistance to translation, rotation, and scaling , 1999, Other Conferences.

[28]  Thierry Pun,et al.  Fast Robust Template Matching for Affine Resistant Image Watermarks , 1999, Information Hiding.

[29]  Franck Davoine,et al.  Geometrical and frequential watermarking scheme using similarities , 1999, Electronic Imaging.