A Novel Image Ownership Protection Scheme Based on Rehashing Concept and Vector Quantization

Article type: Research Article

Authors: Lin, Chia-Chen | Hu, Yu Chen | Chang, Chin-Chen

Affiliations: Department of Computer Science and Information Management, Providence University, Taichung 433, Taiwan. E-mail: {mhlin3,ychu}@pu.edu.tw | Department of Information Engineering and Computer Science, Feng Chia University, Taichung 407, Taiwan. E-mail: ccc@cs.ccu.edu.tw

Abstract: A novel watermarking scheme that is capable of hiding authorization data in a gray-level image is proposed in this letter. The proposed scheme generates a key stream to be the key to connect the authorized image and its watermark. The key stream is extra data rather than data being embedded into the authorized image. Such arrangement can guarantee the integrity of the image. To reduce the complexity in computing the key stream for the authorized gray-level image, two techniques are employed in the proposed scheme. One is the concept of rehashing, and the other is the vector quantization. The benefits of the proposal are to provide a key stream to prove the gray-level's ownership, and to keep the authorized image in its original state without any modification.

Keywords: Image Hiding, watermark, rehashing concept, vector quantization, key stream

Journal: Fundamenta Informaticae, vol. 71, no. 4, pp. 443-451, 2006