A Hybrid Intelligent SVD-Based Digital Image Watermarking

This paper proposes an intelligent hybrid watermarking algorithm for digital images. In digital image watermarking, robustness and imperceptibility compete with each other. In this paper we applied a hybrid intelligent algorithm based on genetic programming and particle swarm optimization to make a trade off between robustness and imperceptibility. In this way the intelligent method has been applied in DCT_DWT_SVD domain. First of all the original image is transformed into DCT domain and then a part of DCT matrix is decomposed into four subbands using discrete wavelet transform and finally the singular values of each subband are shaped perceptually by singular values of watermark image to embed the watermark. The optimization problem which is related to a conflict between robustness and imperceptibility is solved by means of genetic programming and particle swarm optimization, simultaneously, to achieve the best performance in robustness without losing the quality of host image. Experimental results show improvement in imperceptibility and robustness under several attacks and different images.