Sharif Digital Repository

From the birth of multi-spectral imaging techniques, there has been a tendency to consider and process this new type of data as a set of parallel gray-scale images, instead of an ensemble of an n-D realization. However, it has been proved that using vector-based tools leads to a more appropriate understanding of color images and thus more efficient algorithms for processing them. Such tools are able to take into consideration the high correlation of the color components and thus to successfully carry out energy compaction. In this paper, a novel method is proposed to utilize the principal component analysis in the neighborhoods of an image in order to extract the corresponding eigenimages.... 

In line with the expansion of the Internet, the issue of information security has gained special importance. Many methods have been provided in order to establish hidden communications. In the meanwhile, steganography is one of a relatively new method. A method is introduced in this paper for exchanging information by steganography on HTML pages. The main idea in this method is to hide coded data in the ID attribute of the HTML document tags. Since numerous HTML pages are on the web, this method can be widely used. The suggested method is implemented by using the Java language. © 2006 Springer  

An invisible image watermarking scheme tends to insert the mark in a transparent manner, with the highest possible energy. Several watermarking algorithms use human visual models as perceptual masks to maximize the power of watermark. We take advantage of inhibitory and excitatory characteristics of eye receptors which yield an extra capacity, for amplifying watermark power, while still satisfying imperceptibility constraint. Spatial-domain image entropy is used as a measure of strength of inhibitory effect. The principle of our idea is based on the decomposition of mark sequence into two parts, corresponding to two complementary sets of pixels in spatial-domain. These sets are determined... 

A new robust image adaptive digital watermarking algorithm in wavelet transform domain is proposed in this paper. The proposed method exploits Human Visual System (HVS) characteristics and entropy masking concept to determine image adaptive thresholds for selection of perceptually significant coefficients. The mark is embedded in the coefficients of all subbands including the LL subband. Experimental results show that the proposed method significantly improves watermarking performance over conventional methods, in the terms of invisibility and robustness  

This paper proposes a semi-fragile, robust-to-JPEG2000 compression watermarking method which is based on the Human Visual System (HVS). This method is designed to verify the content integrity of Region of Interest (ROI) in tele-radiology images. The design of watermarking systems based on HVS leads to the possibility of embedding watermarks in places that are not obvious to the human eye. In this way, notwithstanding increased capacity and robustness, it becomes possible to hide more watermarks. Based on perceptual model of HVS, we propose a new watermarking scheme that embeds the watermarks using a replacement method. Thus, the proposed method not only detects the watermarks but also... 

In this paper, we used image inpainting as a means for reconstruction of small damaged portions of a watermarked image so that the hidden watermark is not detectable afterwards. Our new watermarking attack algorithm extends the exemplar-based inpainting method, and then we apply it to intended noisy watermarked images to alter the watermark detection process. Our approach is completely free from any pre-assumption on the watermarking algorithm or any other parameters that is used during the watermark embedding procedure. The average PSNR/SSIM of the watermarked image after applying the proposed attack is more than 35/0.98 and the average NC for extracted watermark is lowers than 0.5, so... 

With the widespread internet usage, digital contents are easily distributed throughout the world. To eliminate concerns of producers and owners of digital contents, watermarking techniques are extensively being used. Robustness against intentional and unintentional attacks is a major quality of watermarking systems. Since different attacks tend to target different parts of the frequency spectrum, in this paper we propose a framework for blind watermarking which determines the type of attack that the image has gone through before extracting the watermark. Within this framework, we propose an attack classification method to identify the region of the frequency spectrum that is less damaged.... 

Watermarking is a suitable approach for digital image authentication. Robustness regarding attacks that aim to remove the watermark is one of the most important challenges in watermarking, in general. Several different attacks are reported that aim to make it difficult or impossible for the real owner of the digital watermarked image to extract the watermark. Some of such common attacks are noise addition, compression, scaling, rotation, clipping, cropping, etc. In this paper we address the issue of print and scan attack by introducing a method to model the scanner and printer. Then we will simulate the print and scan attack on the digital images to evaluate its robustness. In addition, we... 

With the widespread internet usage, digital contents are easily distributed throughout the world. To eliminate concerns of producers and owners of digital contents, watermarking techniques are extensively being used. Robustness against intentional and unintentional attacks is a major quality of watermarking systems. Since different attacks tend to target different parts of the frequency spectrum, in this paper we propose a framework for blind watermarking which determines the type of attack that the image has gone through before extracting the watermark. Within this framework, we propose an attack classification method to identify the region of the frequency spectrum that is less damaged.... 

Robustness against attacks is an important requirement in image watermarking. This paper presents a robust watermarking algorithm in wavelet transform domain. Firstly, original image is decomposed into its subbands using three level wavelet transform, then, significant coefficients with the same position in HL, LH and HH subbands of the last level are extracted to make a triplet. To embed a watermark bit into a triplet, the standard deviation of triplet coefficients magnitude is set to zero for zero bit or increased for a one bit. Three constant are used to increase the standard deviations of a triplet coefficients. The value of these constants affects the robustness of algorithm and the... 

One of the main properties of digital watermarking methods is their security against attacks. In this paper, a novel attack against an adaptive semi-fragile image watermarking is proposed. In this attack, watermarking key and watermark are estimated by using several watermarked images. In order to improve the watermarking scheme against the proposed attack, the entropy of image blocks is utilized. Using entropy is compatible with Human Visual System (HVS); therefore it is suitable to determine the weight of watermark in image blocks. Since entropy is a sensitive feature, it is used to improve the watermarking method performance against the proposed attack. It is shown that this modification... 

A video watermarking scheme is proposed in this paper using the concept of the secret sharing scheme. The owner's mark is split into twin shares, where the shares are inserted into the video frames in the spatial domain in a simple manner. The detection algorithm uses a linear function applied to the twin shares to reconstruct the secret. This makes the watermarked video sequence robust against pirate attacks, such as frame averaging and frame swapping. Due to the compatibility of the exploited secret sharing scheme to geometrical distortions, the watermarking system is also robust to this kind of processing schemes. On account of insertion of various marks into different frames, which are... 

In this paper, a novel service that uses audio watermarking for covert communication through telephone system is presented. This system is suitable for ISDN and PSIN networks and it can be modified for using in mobile systems. We use a Direct sequence spread spectrum algorithem with perceptual modeling of HAS for embedding watermark into the audio or speed signals. The watermark is robust against telephone channel attacks such as AWGN , Low pass filtering, D/A-A/D conversion, Downsampling down to 64 slips and A-Law or μ-Law conversion. This system is also robust against audio format conversion such as wave (windows PCM) format to mp3 (down o 64 kbps compression. © 2006 IEEE  

The hidden, real-time sending and display of information, esp. in public places, has since long received attention and faced many challenges. Therefore, different methods have been proposed so far for hiding information in different cover media. In this paper I propose a new method for the real-time hiding of information without need to any storage cover media. This method is based on the real-time hiding of information in output screens of the instrument (such as screens shown by the monitor). This method of steganography is very similar to the two discussions of image steganography and video steganography. The idea suggested in this paper was simulated on a PC computer by using the Pascal... 

Some of the most important classes of watermark detection methods in image watermarking are correlation-based algorithms. In these methods usually a pseudorandom noise pattern is embedded in the host image. The receiver can regenerate this pattern by having a key that is the seed of a random number generator. After that if the correlation between this pattern and the image that is assumed to have the watermark is higher than a predefined threshold, it means that the watermark exists and vice versa. Here, we show the advantage of using the Julian set patterns as a watermark, instead of the commonly used pseudorandom noise pattern. Julian set patterns can be regenerated in receiver with few... 

In this paper we propose a novel approach to insertion of watermark in the video sequences. The proposed scheme is based on visual cryptography and performs temporal scrambling for watermark embedding. Watermark, which may be a visible logo, is frequently split and inserted into video frames. Watermark detection can be verified by the human eye. Inserted watermark is expected to resist collusion attack, which is a major concern in video watermarking. Experimental results show that the proposed method provides a high resilience against some non-hostile video processing schemes, such as geometrical distortions. © 2006 IEEE  

One of the main properties of fragile watermarking schemes is to indicate the location of changes made to the image, i.e. tamper localization, In addition to detection of watermarked image modifications. In this paper, the localization property Is added to the SVD(Singular Value Decomposition) based fragile watermarking scheme proposed by Byun et al. To do this, a hierarchical watermarking structure is used, where the Image is partitioned into blocks In a multilevel hierarchy, and then the SVD-based algorithm Is employed at each level to Insert authenticating data In sub-blocks. In the verification process, blocks at the lowest hierarchical level can detect modifications made to the... 

Determining the capacity of watermark for images is a complex task. This capacity may be influenced by many factors such as the content of image and also the strength of watermark. In some recent works the image content has been considered for calculation of watermark capacity. One such approach is to use the Noise Visibility Function (NVF) introduced in [3]. In this paper we introduced a new method for finding NVF according to the quad tree representation of image instead of using pixel neighborhood data. Our experimental results showed that the depth of a pixel in image quad tree represents much information about the pixel and its maximum allowable distortion compared to pixel neighborhood... 

Some of the most important classes of watermark detection methods in image watermarking are correlation based algorithms. In these methods usually a pseudorandom pattern is embedded in host image. Receiver can regenerate this pattern by having a key that is the seed of a random number generator. After that if the correlation between this pattern and the image that is assumed to have the watermark is higher than a predefined threshold, this means that the watermark exists and vise versa. In this paper we showed the advantage of using the Julian set patterns as a watermark, instead of commonly used pseudorandom noisy pattern. Julian set patterns can be regenerate in receiver with few... 

Image-Adaptive watermarking systems exploit visual models to adapt the watermark to local properties of the host image. This leads to a watermark power enhancement, hence an improved resilience against different attacks, while keeping the mark imperceptible. Visual models consider different properties of the human visual system, such as frequency sensitivity, luminance sensitivity and contrast masking. Entropy masking is another human visual system's characteristic, which rarely has been addressed in visual models. In this paper we have utilized this masking effect to improve the robustness of Image-Adaptive watermarks while keeping their transparency. Experimental results show a significant...