Pixel-wise masking for watermarking using local standard deviation and wavelet compression

This work was financed in the framework of CNCSIS grants TD/47/2005/34702 and A/29/27688/2005. 1 Politehnica University of Timisoara, Communications Department, Bd. V. Parvan Nr. 2, 300223 Timisoara, e-mail {corina.nafornita, alexandru.isar}@etc.upt.ro 2 Technical University of Cluj-Napoca, Communications Department Cluj-Napoca, e-mail [email protected] Abstract – Perceptual watermarking in the wavelet domain has been proposed for a blind spread spectrum technique, taking into account the noise sensitivity, texture and the luminance content of all the image subbands. In this paper, we propose a modified perceptual mask, where the texture content is appreciated with the aid of the local standard deviation of the original image, which is further compressed in the wavelet domain. The effectiveness of the new perceptual mask is appreciated by comparison with the old watermarking system.