A New Robust Digital Image Watermarking Technique Based on Joint DWT-DCT Transformation

In this paper, a new robust digital image watermarking algorithm based on Joint DWT-DCT Transformation is proposed. The imperceptibility is provided as well as higher robustness against common signal processing attacks. A binary watermarked image is embedded in certain sub-bands of a 3-level DWT transformed of a host image. Then, DCT transform of each selected DWT sub-band is computed and the PN-sequences of the watermark bits are embedded in the coefficients of the corresponding DCT middle frequencies. In extraction stages, the watermarked image, which maybe attacked, is first preprocessed by sharpening and Laplassian of Gaussian filters. Then, the same approach as the embedding process is used to extract the DCT middle frequencies of each sub-band. Finally, correlation between mid-band coefficients and PN-sequences is calculated to determine watermarked bits. Experimental results show that the proposed method improved the performance of the watermarking algorithms which are based on the joint of DWT-DCT.