New detector for spread-spectrum based image watermarking using underdetermined ICA

This paper presents a novel scheme for detection of watermarks embedded in multimedia signals using spread spectrum (SS) techniques. The detection method is centered on using the model that the embedded watermark and the host signal are mutually independent. The proposed detector assumes that the host signal and the watermark obey non-Gaussian distributions. The proposed blind watermark detector employs underdetermined blind source separation (BSS) based on independent component analysis (ICA) for watermark estimation from the watermarked image. The mean-field theory based undetermined BSS scheme is used for watermark estimation. Analytical results are presented showing that the proposed detector performs significantly better than the existing correlation based blind detectors traditionally used for SS-based image watermarking.