Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Invariant color image watermarking approach using quaternion radial harmonic Fourier moments

  • Published:
Multimedia Tools and Applications Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Moments and moment invariants have become a powerful tool in gray image watermarking. More recently, a few moment-based approaches were developed to embed watermark into color host image by marking the luminance component or three color channels, and they always cannot obtain better imperceptibility and robustness because of ignoring the correlation between different color channels. Quaternion is a generalization of the complex numbers, and can treat a color image as a vector field without losing color information. In this paper, based on algebra of quaternions and radial harmonic Fourier moments (RHFMs), we introduced quaternion radial harmonic Fourier moments (QRHFMs) for color images, which can be seen as the generalization of RHFMs for gray-level images. We analyzed and discussed the geometric invariant property of QRHFMs, and proposed a geometric invariant color image watermarking scheme using QRHFMs. Experimental results show that the proposed watermarking scheme not only provides better imperceptibility and robustness against various attacks (including common image processing operations and geometric distortions), but also yields better watermark detection performance than some state-of-the-art image watermarking schemes.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5
Fig. 6
Fig. 7
Fig. 8
Fig. 9
Fig. 10

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. Alghoniemy M, Tewfik AH (2000) Image watermarking by moment invariants. Proceedings of IEEE International Conference on Image Processing, Vancouver, BC, Canada 2:73–76

  2. Ali M, Ahn CW (2014) An optimized watermarking technique based on self-adaptive DE in DWT–SVD transform domain. Signal Process 94:545–556

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Bhatnagar G, Wu QM, Atrey PK (2013) Secure randomized image watermarking based on singular value decomposition. ACM Trans Multimed Comput Commun Appl (TOMCCAP) 10(1). doi:10.1145/2542205.2542207

  4. Bianchi T, Piva A (2013) Secure watermarking for multimedia content protection: a review of its benefits and open issues. IEEE Signal Process Mag 30(2):87–96

    Article  Google Scholar 

  5. Cao J, Huang JW (2012) Controllable secure watermarking technique for tradeoff between robustness and security. IEEE Trans Inf Forensics Secur 7(2):821–826

    Article  Google Scholar 

  6. Cheddad A, Condell J, Curran K (2010) Digital image steganography: survey and analysis of current methods. Signal Process 90(3):727–752

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  7. Chen BJ, Shu HZ, Zhang H, Chen G (2012) Quaternion Zernike moments and their invariants for color image analysis and object recognition. Signal Process 92(2):308–318

    Article  Google Scholar 

  8. Chou CH, Liu KC (2010) A perceptually tuned watermarking scheme for color images. IEEE Trans Image Process 19(11):2966–2982

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  9. Elshoura SM, Megherbi DB (2013) Analysis of noise sensitivity of Tchebichef and Zernike moments with application to image watermarking. J Vis Commun Image Represent 24(5):567–578

    Article  Google Scholar 

  10. Guo JM, Prasetyo H (2014) False-positive-free SVD-based image watermarking. J Vis Commun Image Represent 25(5):1149–1163

    Article  Google Scholar 

  11. Guo LQ, Zhu M (2011) Quaternion Fourier-Mellin moments for color image. Pattern Recogn 44(2):187–195

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  12. Kantor IL, Solodovnikov AS (1989) Hypercomplex number: an elementary introduction to algebras. Springer, NewYork

    Book  MATH  Google Scholar 

  13. Kim HS, Lee HK (2003) Invariant image watermark using Zernike moments. IEEE Trans Circ Syst Video Technol 13(8):766–775

    Article  Google Scholar 

  14. Li L, Li S, Abraham A, Pan J (2012) Geometrically invariant image watermarking using polar Harmonic transforms. Inf Sci 199(15):1–19

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  15. Marco B, Davide C, Victor P (2014) Protecting the content integrity of digital imagery with fidelity preservation: an improved version. ACM Trans Multimed Comput Commun Appl 10(3).doi:10.1145/2568224

  16. Mathon B, Cayre F, Bas P, Macq B (2014) Optimal transport for secure spread-spectrum watermarking of still images. IEEE Trans Image Process 23(4):1694–1705

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  17. Mohammad AA (2012) A new digital image watermarking scheme based on Schur decomposition. Multimed Tools Appl 59(3):851–883

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  18. Muhammad KK (2011) Research advances in data hiding for multimedia security. Multimed Tools Appl 52(2–3):257–261

    Google Scholar 

  19. Nikolaidis A (2012) Affine transformation invariant image watermarking using moment normalization and radial symmetry transform. The 18th IEEE International Conference on Image Processing (ICIP) September 11–14, 2012 2729–2732

  20. Niu PP, Wang XY, Yang YP, Lu MY (2011) A novel color image watermarking scheme in nonsampled contourlet-domain. Expert Syst Appl 38(3):2081–2098

    Article  Google Scholar 

  21. Papakostas GA, Koulouriotis DE, Tourassis VD (2012) Performance evaluation of moment-based watermarking methods: a review. J Syst Softw 85(8):1864–1884

    Article  Google Scholar 

  22. Papakostas GA, Tsougenis ED, Koulouriotis DE (2014) Moment-based local image watermarking via genetic optimization. Appl Math Comput 227:222–236

    MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  23. Ren H, Ping Z, Bo W, Wu W (2003) Multidistortion-invariant image recognition with radial harmonic Fourier moments. J Opt Soc Am A 20(4):631–637

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  24. Sasan G, Mohammad SH, Habibollah D, Mehri O (2014) Robust watermarking against geometric attacks using partial calculation of radial moments and interval phase modulation. Inf Sci 269:94–105

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  25. Savelonas MA, Chountasis S (2010) Noise-resistant watermarking in the fractional Fourier domain utilizing moment-based image representation. Signal Process 90(8):2521–2528

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  26. Singh C, Ranade SK (2013) A high capacity image adaptive watermarking scheme with radial harmonic Fourier moments. Digital Signal Process 23(5):1470–1482

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  27. Su Q, Niu Y, Wang G (2014) Color image blind watermarking scheme based on QR decomposition. Signal Process 94:219–235

    Article  Google Scholar 

  28. Suk T, Flusser J (2009) Affine moment invariants of color images. The 13th International Conference on Computer Analysis of Images and Patterns. Münste, Germany. Lect Notes Comput Sci 5702:334–341

    Article  Google Scholar 

  29. Thomas W, Bernhard R (2014) Security and privacy protection in visual sensor networks: a survey. ACM Comput Surv 47(1). doi:10.1145/2545883

  30. Tsui TK, Zhang X-P, Androutsos D (2008) Color image watermarking using multidimensional Fourier transforms. IEEE Trans Inf Forensics Secur 3(1):16–28

    Article  Google Scholar 

  31. Venkataramana A, Ananth RP (2007) Image watermarking using Krawtchouk moments. Int Conf Comput Theory Appl (ICCTA ‘07), Kolkata 676–680

  32. Wang XY, Hou LM (2010) A new robust digital image watermarking based on Pseudo-Zernike moments. Multidim Syst Sign Process 21(2):179–196

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  33. Xin Y, Liao S, Pawlak M (2007) Circularly orthogonal moments for geometrically robust image watermarking. Pattern Recogn 40(12):3740–3752

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  34. Yuan XC, Pun CM, Chen PCL (2013) Geometric invariant watermarking by local Zernike moments of binary image patches. Signal Process 94(7):2087–2095

    Article  Google Scholar 

  35. Zhang H, Shu H, Coatrieux G (2011) Affine Legendre moment invariants for image watermarking robust to geometric distortions. IEEE Trans Image Process 20(8):2189–2199

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  36. Zhang L, Xiao WW, Ji Z (2007) Local affine transform invariant image watermarking by Krawtchouk moment invariants. IET Inf Secur 1(3):97–105

    Article  Google Scholar 

  37. Zheng D, Liu Y, Zhao J, El Saddik A (2007) A survey of RST invariant image watermarking algorithms. ACM Comput Surv 39(2):1–91

    Article  Google Scholar 

  38. Zong T, Xiang Y, Natgunanathan I, Guo S, Zhou W, Beliakov G (2015) Robust histogram shape based method for image watermarking. IEEE Trans Circ Syst Video Technol 25(5):717–729

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant No. 61472171 & 61272416, the Open Project Program of Jiangsu Key Laboratory of Image and Video Understanding for Social Safety (Nanjing University of Science and Technology) under Grant No. 30920130122006, the Open Foundation of Zhejiang Key Laboratory for Signal Processing under Grant No. ZJKL_4_SP-OP2013-01, the Open Foundation of Provincial Key Laboratory for Computer Information Processing Technology (Soochow University) under Grant No. KJS1325, the Open Project Program of the State Key Lab of CAD&CG (Grant No. A1425), Zhejiang University, and Liaoning Research Project for Institutions of Higher Education of China under Grant No. L2013407.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Computer and Information Technology, Liaoning Normal University, Dalian, 116029, People’s Republic of China

    Pan-pan Niu, Pei Wang, Yu-nan Liu, Hong-ying Yang & Xiang-yang Wang

  2. Provincial Key Laboratory for Computer Information Processing Technology, Soochow University, Suzhou, 215006, People’s Republic of China

    Xiang-yang Wang

Authors
  1. Pan-pan Niu
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Pei Wang
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Yu-nan Liu
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Hong-ying Yang
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  5. Xiang-yang Wang
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Hong-ying Yang or Xiang-yang Wang.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Niu, Pp., Wang, P., Liu, Yn. et al. Invariant color image watermarking approach using quaternion radial harmonic Fourier moments. Multimed Tools Appl 75, 7655–7679 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-015-2687-1

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Revised:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-015-2687-1

Keywords

Search

Navigation