ROI based robust and secure image watermarking using DWT and Arnold map

Three main requirements of any watermarking scheme are imperceptibility, robustness and security. In this paper, a new robust blind image watermarking scheme based on Region of Interest (ROI) using Arnold scrambling is proposed. The proposed scheme satisfies the requirements via using a watermark generated from the host image, the used embedding strategy and Arnold scrambling. In this paper, the ROI of the host image is used as the watermark image. First-level DWT is applied to the watermark and approximation coefficients are chosen as information to be embedded. Each approximation coefficient is embedded into the low frequency sub band of a selected block of the host image in the wavelet domain. Before embedding, Arnold scrambling is performed on the approximation coefficients of the watermark as well as the blocks of the host image. This makes the scheme more robust and secure. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme achieves high degree of security, imperceptibility and robustness against the variety of attacks.