A Secure Semi-Fragile Watermarking for Image Authentication Based on Integer Wavelet Transform with Parameters Abstract

Semi-fragile watermark fragile to malicious modifications while robust to incidental manipulations is drawing many attentions in image authentication. However, watermark security has not received enough attention yet. Lifting scheme can construct second generation wavelets. With regard to the first generation wavelets, its implementation is easier, simpler and faster than the Mallat algorithm. In this paper, we propose a novel semi-fragile watermarking scheme for image authentication based on integer wavelet transform with parameters. The features of the proposed scheme are as follows: i) Parameterized integer wavelet transform is constructed. The wavelet base is chosen by a parameter and thus guarantees the security of the watermark. ii) The performance of the generated watermark is improved and the computation complexity is reduced due to the proposed framework of parameterized integer wavelet transform using lifting scheme. iii) The watermark can tolerate JPEG lossy compression as low as quality of 40% while locate the tampered area accurately. To our best knowledge, such performance to resist JPEG compression for semi-fragile watermarking has not been reported in the literature. Experimental results show that the proposed scheme can guarantee the safety of the watermark and locate the tamper area accurately when the image has been suffered from malicious tamper while tolerating JPEG lossy compression to a large extent.