Utilizing neighborhood coefficient correlation: a new image watermarking technique robust to singular and hybrid attacks

A new blind digital image watermarking algorithm with watermark embedded in discrete cosine transform (DCT) coefficients is presented in this paper. The proposed scheme exploits correlation between DCT coefficients in neighborhood blocks for embedding. The watermark is embedded by modifying two DCT coefficients, one pertaining to a block in which watermark bit (0 or 1) is to be embedded and the other corresponding to the selected neighborhood block. Both the selected coefficients are modified by a modification factor so that the difference between the pair of coefficients is brought to a predefined zone. This difference between two DCT coefficients is used to extract watermark. The proposed technique has been tested for different attacks like JPEG compression, rotation, cropping, filtering, gaussian noise, salt and pepper noise, histogram equalization etc. It has been observed that the scheme is highly robust not only for the above mentioned attacks used singularly, but also for different possible combinations of simultaneous attacks. A comparison of the proposed technique with some state of art existing algorithms reveals that our scheme provides better results in terms of quality of watermarked images, payload and robustness.