Improved hybrid algorithm for robust and imperceptible multiple watermarking using digital images

This paper presents a new robust hybrid multiple watermarking technique using fusion of discrete wavelet transforms (DWT), discrete cosine transforms (DCT), and singular value decomposition (SVD) instead of applying DWT, DCT and SVD individually or combination of DWT-SVD / DCT-SVD. For identity authentication purposes, multiple watermarks are embedded into the same medical image / multimedia objects simultaneously, which provides extra level of security with acceptable performance in terms of robustness and imperceptibility. In the embedding process, the cover image is decomposed into first level discrete wavelet transforms where the A (approximation/lower frequency sub-band) is transformed by DCT and SVD. The watermark image is also transformed by DWT, DCT and SVD. The S vector of watermark information is embedded in the S component of the cover image. The watermarked image is generated by inverse SVD on modified S vector and original U, V vectors followed by inverse DCT and inverse DWT. The watermark is extracted using an extraction algorithm. Furthermore, the text watermark is embedding at the second level of the D (diagonal sub-band) of the cover image. The security of the text watermark considered as EPR (Electronic Patient Record) data is enhanced by using encryption method before embedding into the cover. The results are obtained by varying the gain factor, size of the text watermark, and cover medical images. The method has been extensively tested and analyzed against known attacks and is found to be giving superior performance for robustness, capacity and reduced storage and bandwidth requirements compared to reported techniques suggested by other authors.