Analysis of robustness of an image watermarking algorithm using the Dual Tree Complex Wavelet Transform and Just Noticeable Difference

Abstract

In this paper we use the Dual Tree Complex Wavelet Transform (DT - CWT) to watermark an image using a binary watermark which is blind in nature. It was observed that when Just Noticeable Difference (JND) of the image is used as a strength multiplier of the watermark while embedding the binary image in the DT - CWT coefficients of the host image, there is a significant improvement in the robustness of the watermarking technique. Finally, we test and compare the robustness of the non - JND watermarking procedure with the JND technique to measure the performance of the watermark against the effect of various attacks. The experimental result indicates that the use of JND in the image watermarking scheme can improve the robustness of the watermarked image against various image processing and noise based attacks especially JPEG compression and image rotation.