C11. Hybrid Digital Image Watermarking Technique for Data Hiding

This paper presents a hybrid image watermarking technique for data hiding over Internet. The idea of the proposed technique is based on fusing multiple watermark images using wavelet fusion algorithm. Then, the resultant fused watermark is embedded in the original image using hybrid DWT-SVD watermarking algorithm to produce the watermarked image. The performance of the proposed algorithm is evaluated and a comparative study is done between the hybrid DWT-SVD and SVD watermarking algorithm for single and multiple watermarks. The experimental results verify and prove that the wavelet fusion is an efficient algorithm for fusing multiple watermarks. The image watermarking technique using the hybrid DWT-SVD is more robust than that using the SVD only. The results also prove that the proposed watermarking technique improves both the capacity of the embedded information and robustness without affecting the perceptual quality of the original image. Indeed, the extraction of the fused watermark is possible in the presence of severe attacks.