Optimizing Imperceptibility and Robustness Using Selective DCT Coefficients for Image Copyright Protection
Received: 14 January 2025 | Revised: 4 March 2025 and 24 May 2025 | Accepted: 30 May 2025 | Online: 2 August 2025
Corresponding author: Majid Rahardi
Abstract
This paper presents an invisible watermarking technique for image copyright protection based on the Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT). The proposed method balances imperceptibility and robustness against various image manipulations, such as JPEG compression, filtering, and noise attacks. By embedding the watermark into high-frequency DCT coefficients, the technique ensures minimal visual distortion while preserving watermark integrity. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method achieves high Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratio (PSNR) values, averaging 51.81 dB across multiple test images, and excellent structural similarity with an average Structural Similarity Index Measure (SSIM) of 0.9993. The proposed method also shows strong resilience to image tampering, with Normalized Cross-Correlation (NC) values of 0.7593 and low Bit Error Rate (BER) values of 0.1190 under various attack scenarios. These results highlight the method's effectiveness in protecting image copyright while maintaining computational efficiency.
Keywords:
copyright protection, discrete cosine transform, image watermarkingDownloads
References
A. Mohanarathinam, S. Kamalraj, G. K. D. Prasanna Venkatesan, R. V. Ravi, and C. S. Manikandababu, "Digital watermarking techniques for image security: a review," Journal of Ambient Intelligence and Humanized Computing, vol. 11, no. 8, pp. 3221–3229, Aug. 2020. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12652-019-01500-1
L. Rakhmawati, W. Wirawan, S. Suwadi, C. Delpha, and P. Duhamel, "Blind robust image watermarking based on adaptive embedding strength and distribution of quantified coefficients," Expert Systems with Applications, vol. 187, Jan. 2022, Art. no. 115906. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eswa.2021.115906
I. J. Cox, M. L. Miller, J. A. Bloom, J. Fridrich, and T. Kalker, Eds., Preface to the Second Edition, 2nd ed. San Francisco, CA, USA: Morgan Kaufmann, 2008.
R. Zhu and X. Wang, "Efficient Digital Watermarking in DCT Domain," in 2009 International Forum on Information Technology and Applications, Chengdu, China, 2009, pp. 587–590. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1109/IFITA.2009.88
M. Begum and M. S. Uddin, "Digital Image Watermarking Techniques: A Review," Information, vol. 11, no. 2, Feb. 2020, Art. no. 110. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3390/info11020110
M. Rahardi, F. F. Abdulloh, and W. S. Putra, "A Blind Robust Image Watermarking on Selected DCT Coefficients for Copyright Protection," International Journal of Advanced Computer Science and Applications, vol. 13, no. 7, pp. 719–726, Jul. 2022. DOI: https://doi.org/10.14569/IJACSA.2022.0130785
A. F. Qasim, F. Meziane, and R. Aspin, "Digital watermarking: Applicability for developing trust in medical imaging workflows state of the art review," Computer Science Review, vol. 27, pp. 45–60, Feb. 2018. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cosrev.2017.11.003
Y. Luo, X. Tan, and Z. Cai, "Robust Deep Image Watermarking: A Survey," Computers, Materials and Continua, vol. 81, no. 1, pp. 133–160, Oct. 2024. DOI: https://doi.org/10.32604/cmc.2024.055150
F. Thakkar and V. K. Srivastava, "An adaptive, secure and imperceptive image watermarking using swarm intelligence, Arnold transform, SVD and DWT," Multimedia Tools and Applications, vol. 80, no. 8, pp. 12275–12292, Mar. 2021. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-020-10220-0
A. Munshi, "Randomly-based Stepwise Multi-Level Distributed Medical Image Steganography," Engineering, Technology & Applied Science Research, vol. 13, no. 3, pp. 10922–10930, Jun. 2023. DOI: https://doi.org/10.48084/etasr.5935
Laxmanika and P. K. Singh, "Robust and imperceptible image watermarking technique based on SVD, DCT, BEMD and PSO in wavelet domain," Multimedia Tools and Applications, vol. 81, no. 16, pp. 22001–22026, Jul. 2022. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-021-11246-8
Y. Chen, Z. Jia, Y. Peng, and Y. Peng, "Efficient Robust Watermarking Based on Structure-Preserving Quaternion Singular Value Decomposition," IEEE Transactions on Image Processing, vol. 32, pp. 3964–3979, 2023. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1109/TIP.2023.3293773
S. Kukreja, G. Kasana, and S. S. Kasana, "Copyright protection scheme for color images using extended visual cryptography," Computers & Electrical Engineering, vol. 91, no. 2, May 2021, Art. no. 106931. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compeleceng.2020.106931
S. B. B. Ahmadi, G. Zhang, M. Rabbani, L. Boukela, and H. Jelodar, "An intelligent and blind dual color image watermarking for authentication and copyright protection," Applied Intelligence, vol. 51, no. 3, pp. 1701–1732, Mar. 2021. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10489-020-01903-0
V. Sisaudia and V. P. Vishwakarma, "Copyright protection using KELM-PSO based multi-spectral image watermarking in DCT domain with local texture information based selection," Multimedia Tools and Applications, vol. 80, no. 6, pp. 8667–8688, Mar. 2021. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-020-10028-y
H. M. Al-Otum, "Wavelet packets-based watermarking with preserved high color image quality and enhanced robustness for copyright protection applications," Multimedia Tools and Applications, vol. 78, no. 2, pp. 2199–2225, Jan. 2019. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-018-6328-3
A. Daoui, H. Karmouni, M. Sayyouri, Q. Hassan, M. Maaroufi, and B. Alami, "New Robust Method for Image Copyright Protection Using Histogram Features and Sine Cosine Algorithm," Expert Systems with Applications, vol. 177, no. 3, Apr. 2021, Art. no. 114978. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eswa.2021.114978
"The USC-SIPI Image Database." Kaggle. [Online]. Available: https://www.kaggle.com/datasets/luffyluffyluffy/the-uscsipi-image-database.
M. Yousefi Valandar, M. Jafari Barani, and P. Ayubi, "A blind and robust color images watermarking method based on block transform and secured by modified 3-dimensional Hénon map," Soft Computing, vol. 24, no. 2, pp. 771–794, Jan. 2020. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00500-019-04524-z
R. Thanki, A. Kothari, and D. Trivedi, "Hybrid and blind watermarking scheme in DCuT – RDWT domain," Journal of Information Security and Applications, vol. 46, no. C, pp. 231–249, Jun. 2019. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jisa.2019.03.017
Downloads
How to Cite
License
Copyright (c) 2025 Majid Rahardi, Afrig Aminuddin, Ferian Fauzi Abdulloh, Nafiatun Sholihah, Ferda Ernawan
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
- Authors retain the copyright and grant the journal the right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) after its publication in ETASR with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
