A discrete wavelet transform based recoverable image processing for privacy protection

This paper presents a novel scheme of a recoverable image processing for privacy protection in real-time video surveillance system. The privacy information is embedded into the video using information hiding. Thus, the original privacy information can be recoverable with secrete key if necessary. In the proposed system, the privacy information is defined as information of objects that consist of detailed data to recover the original image of objects. The scheme is based on discrete wavelet transform (DWT) which is used for generating privacy-protected low resolution image, as well as the high resolution data including privacy information. An amplitude modulo modulation based information hiding scheme is used to hide the privacy information. Experimental results have shown that the proposed system can reduce the amount of the privacy information significantly, and allows the privacy information to be revealed after being embedded in real time.