Imperceptible–Visible Watermarking to Information Security Tasks in Color Imaging

Oswaldo Ulises Juarez-Sandoval, Francisco Javier Garcia-Ugalde, Manuel Cedillo-Hernandez, Jazmin Ramirez-Hernandez and Leobardo Hernandez-Gonzalez
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Oswaldo Ulises Juarez-Sandoval: Facultad de Ingeniería, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM), Av. Universidad No. 3000, Ciudad Universitaria, Coyoacán, México City 04510, Mexico
Francisco Javier Garcia-Ugalde: Facultad de Ingeniería, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM), Av. Universidad No. 3000, Ciudad Universitaria, Coyoacán, México City 04510, Mexico
Manuel Cedillo-Hernandez: Instituto Politécnico Nacional (IPN), Escuela Superior de Ingeniería Mecánica y Eléctrica, Unidad Culhuacan, Av. Santa Ana No. 1000, San Francisco Culhuacan, Coyoacán, México City 04430, Mexico
Jazmin Ramirez-Hernandez: Instituto Politécnico Nacional (IPN), Escuela Superior de Ingeniería Mecánica y Eléctrica, Unidad Culhuacan, Av. Santa Ana No. 1000, San Francisco Culhuacan, Coyoacán, México City 04430, Mexico
Leobardo Hernandez-Gonzalez: Instituto Politécnico Nacional (IPN), Escuela Superior de Ingeniería Mecánica y Eléctrica, Unidad Culhuacan, Av. Santa Ana No. 1000, San Francisco Culhuacan, Coyoacán, México City 04430, Mexico

Mathematics, 2021, vol. 9, issue 19, 1-23

Abstract: 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.

Keywords: invisible-visible watermarking; imperceptible-visible watermarking; unseen-visible watermarking; QR; histogram binarization function (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
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