Digital right management control for joint ownership of digital images using biometric features

This paper proposes a method to establish joint ownership of digital images by embedding imperceptible digital pattern in the image. This digital pattern is generated from biometric features of more than one subject in a strategic matter so that the identification of individual subject can be done and the multiple ownership of the digital images can be established. This digital pattern was embedded and extracted from the image and the experiments were also carried out when the image was subjected to signal processing attacks. Coefficients of mid frequency band discrete cosine transform was used for embedding as these coefficients do not adversely affect the perceptual transparency and is also significantly robust to normal signal processing attacks. Experimental results indicate that the insertion of this digital pattern does not change the perceptual properties of the image and the pattern survives signal processing attacks which can be extracted for unique identification.