Image watermarking using digital communication techniques

Electronic still images and video can be distributed quickly and economically by means of ISDN and broadband networks. However, the widespread adoption of electronic distribution of copyrighted digital images is impeded by the ease of illicit copying and dissemination. A solution to this problem is to embed an indelible watermark in the image. The watermark can be used to identify both the source of the image and the intended recipient. This paper presents a watermarking scheme which is based on digital communication techniques. The scheme uses cryptography, error control coding and spread spectrum techniques. The ability of the watermark to withstand lossy compression, image coding, filtering and other image processing operations, is assessed by computer simulations