New Copyright Protection Scheme for Digital Images Based on Visual Cryptography

ABSTRACT

The paper proposes a robust and blind watermarking scheme based on visual cryptography for copyright protection of digital images. It shuffles the pixel locations of the binary watermark using Arnold cat map transform to realize the effect of encryption for better security and it divides the image into blocks of equal size. Two secret shares are generated from the watermark and the image based on visual cryptography by comparing the global mean value of the pixels in the image with the mean values of all pixels of randomly selected blocks. As documented in the experimental results, the proposed scheme is more robust in comparison with other visual cryptography-based watermarking schemes. It can resist several attacks such as JPEG compression, gamma correction, impulse noise, Gaussian noise, blurring, median filter, rotation, scaling, and sharpening attacks on different types of images. The computational time for generating secret shares and detection of the watermark is comparatively small.

KEYWORDS:

• Arnold cat map transform
• Copyright protection
• Digital watermarking
• Robustness
• Share
• Visual cryptography

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

B. Pushpa Devi

B. Pushpa Devi did her BTech and MTech degrees from Anna University, Chennai and Coimbatore. She is an assistant professor in the Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering, NIT Meghalaya. Her research interests include digital watermarking and image processing.

E-mail: [email protected]

Kh. Manglem Singh

Kh. Manglem Singh did his PhD degree from IIT, Guwahati. He is an associate professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, NIT Manipur. His research interests include image and video processing, digital watermarking, and image and video hashing functions.

E-mail: [email protected]

Sudipta Roy

Sudipta Roy did his PhD degree from Assam University, Silchar. He is a professor in the Department of Information Technology, Assam University, Silchar. His research interests include digital watermarking, image processing, data security, and computer networks.

E-mail: [email protected]