Block-based image error concealment using fragile watermarking in error-prone channels

The transmission of block-coded images over wireless channels results in lost blocks. In this paper, we propose a new error concealment method for covering up the high packet losses of an original image after its transmission through an error-prone channel. In this scheme, Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT) is applied to each block of the original image in order to produce a lower resolution copy of the each block. Then, we choose approximation coefficients of each block as replica of the block and embed it into a remote block of the image in the spatial domain. It is shown that the proposed scheme provides significant improvement over existing algorithms in terms of both subjective and objective evaluations. This technique can be implemented for wireless channels to combat degradations in a backward-compatible scheme.