Watermarking based image authentication and tamper detection algorithm using vector quantization approach

In the present work, a novel image watermarking algorithm using vector quantization (VQ) approach is presented for digital image authentication. Watermarks are embedded in two successive stages for image integrity verification and authentication. In the first stage, a key based approach is used to embed robust zero level watermark using properties of indices of vector quantized image. In the second stage, semifragile watermark is embedded by using modified index key based (MIKB) method. Random keys are used to improve the integrity and security of the designed system. Further, to classify an attack quantitatively as acceptable or as a malicious attack, pixel neighbourhood clustering approach is introduced. Proposed approach is evaluated on 250 standard test images using performance measures such as peak signal to noise ratio (PSNR) and normalized hamming similarity (NHS). The experimental results shows that propose approach achieve average false positive rate 0.00024 and the average false negative rate 0.0012. Further, the average PSNR and tamper detection/localization accuracy of watermarked image is 42 dB and 99.8% respectively; while tamper localization sensitivity is very high. The proposed model is found to be robust to common content preserving attacks while fragile to content altering attacks.