Robust copyright protection scheme for digital images using overlapping DCT and SVD

In this paper, a robust lossless copyright protection scheme, based on overlapping discrete cosine transform (DCT) and singular value decomposition (SVD), is presented. The original host image is separated into overlapping blocks, to which the DCT is applied. Direct current (DC) coefficients are extracted from the transformed blocks to form a DC-map. A series of random positions are selected on the map and SVD is performed to construct an ownership share which is used for copyright verification. Simulation results are carried out, demonstrating the robustness of the proposed scheme against different image-manipulation attacks.

Graphical abstractFigure optionsDownload full-size imageDownload as PowerPoint slideHighlights► We propose a robust copyright protection method based on DWT and SVD. ► The proposed method does not modify the host image. ► Original host image is not required to extract the watermark. ► Better robustness of the proposed method against various attacks is achieved.