TY - JOUR
T1 - Imperceptible–visible watermarking to information security tasks in color imaging
AU - Juarez-Sandoval, Oswaldo Ulises
AU - Garcia-Ugalde, Francisco Javier
AU - Cedillo-Hernandez, Manuel
AU - Ramirez-Hernandez, Jazmin
AU - Hernandez-Gonzalez, Leobardo
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.
PY - 2021/10/1
Y1 - 2021/10/1
N2 - Digital image watermarking algorithms have been designed for intellectual property, copyright protection, medical data management, and other related fields; furthermore, in real-world applications such as official documents, banknotes, etc., they are used to deliver additional information about the documents’ authenticity. In this context, the imperceptible–visible watermarking (IVW) algorithm has been designed as a digital reproduction of the real-world watermarks. This paper presents a new improved IVW algorithm for copyright protection that can deliver additional information to the image content. The proposed algorithm is divided into two stages: in the embedding stage, a human visual system-based strategy is used to embed an owner logotype or a 2D quick response (QR) code as a watermark into a color image, maintaining a high watermark imperceptibility and low image-quality degradation. In the exhibition, a new histogram binarization function approach is introduced to exhibit any watermark with enough quality to be recognized or decoded by any application, which is focused on reading QR codes. The experimental results show that the proposed algorithm can embed one or more watermark patterns, maintaining the high imperceptibility and visual quality of the embedded and the exhibited watermark. The performance evaluation shows that the method overcomes several drawbacks reported in previous algorithms, including geometric and image processing attacks such as JPEG and JPEG2000.
AB - Digital image watermarking algorithms have been designed for intellectual property, copyright protection, medical data management, and other related fields; furthermore, in real-world applications such as official documents, banknotes, etc., they are used to deliver additional information about the documents’ authenticity. In this context, the imperceptible–visible watermarking (IVW) algorithm has been designed as a digital reproduction of the real-world watermarks. This paper presents a new improved IVW algorithm for copyright protection that can deliver additional information to the image content. The proposed algorithm is divided into two stages: in the embedding stage, a human visual system-based strategy is used to embed an owner logotype or a 2D quick response (QR) code as a watermark into a color image, maintaining a high watermark imperceptibility and low image-quality degradation. In the exhibition, a new histogram binarization function approach is introduced to exhibit any watermark with enough quality to be recognized or decoded by any application, which is focused on reading QR codes. The experimental results show that the proposed algorithm can embed one or more watermark patterns, maintaining the high imperceptibility and visual quality of the embedded and the exhibited watermark. The performance evaluation shows that the method overcomes several drawbacks reported in previous algorithms, including geometric and image processing attacks such as JPEG and JPEG2000.
KW - Histogram binarization function
KW - Imperceptible-visible watermarking
KW - Invisible-visible watermarking
KW - QR
KW - Unseen-visible watermarking
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85115936882&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.3390/math9192374
DO - 10.3390/math9192374
M3 - Artículo
AN - SCOPUS:85115936882
SN - 2227-7390
VL - 9
JO - Mathematics
JF - Mathematics
IS - 19
M1 - 2374
ER -