Watermarking in halftone images with parity-matched error diffusion
Journal
Signal Processing
Journal Volume
91
Journal Issue
1
Pages
126-135
Date Issued
2011-01
Author(s)
Abstract
In this paper, a halftone watermarking technique of high watermark rate, robustness, and watermark-rate flexibility is presented. This technique, namely the parity-matched error diffusion (PMEDF) method, is capable of achieving an embedded watermark rate as high as 6.2525% with good image quality and without the need for the original image as the reference for the decoding. The proposed PMEDF method employs the high efficient parity-matching strategy to spread a watermark bit to each pixel of a block of the host image. Thus, the majority voting mechanism can be applied for decoding to achieve an advantage of high robustness. As documented in the experimental results, this technique is capable of guarding against degradation, due to cropping, tampering, as well as print-and-scan process in error-diffused halftone images. © 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Type
journal article