Self-embedding fragile watermarking based on reference-data interleaving and adaptive selection of embedding mode

In this paper, we propose a novel self-embedding fragile image watermarking scheme for tampering recovery based on reference-data interleaving mechanism and adaptive selection of embedding mode. During watermark embedding, reference bits are derived from the interleaved, scrambled MSB bits of original image, and then are combined with authentication bits to form the watermark bits for LSB embedding. Different with the reported schemes with the fixed embedding mode, the proposed scheme not only has two types of embedding modes, i.e., overlapping-free embedding and overlapping embedding, but also utilizes the adaptively flexible numbers of MSB and LSB layers to achieve satisfactory performances for different tampering rates. Also, detailed analyses are given to provide the theoretical values of watermarked-image quality, perfect recovery probability, and recovered-image quality, which are used to conclude the optimal choice of embedding modes. Experimental results show the effectiveness and superiority of the proposed scheme compared with some state-of-the-arts schemes.