An effective fragile watermarking scheme for color image tampering detection and self-recovery

• Published in: Signal processing. Image communication Vol. 81; p. 115725
• Main Authors: Molina-Garcia, Javier, Garcia-Salgado, Beatriz P., Ponomaryov, Volodymyr, Reyes-Reyes, Rogelio, Sadovnychiy, Sergiy, Cruz-Ramos, Clara
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Amsterdam Elsevier B.V 01.02.2020; Elsevier BV
• Subjects: Algorithms; Color imagery; Computer simulation; Embedding; Fragile watermarking; Image authentication; Image detection; Image manipulation; Image quality; Image tampering detection; Permutations; Post-processing; Recovery; Self-recovery; Tampering coincidence problem; Watermarking; Image tampering detection; Self-recovery; Tampering coincidence problem; Fragile watermarking; Image authentication
• ISSN: 0923-5965; 1879-2677
• DOI: 10.1016/j.image.2019.115725

In this paper, a fragile watermarking scheme for color-image authentication and self-recovery is proposed. Original image is divided into non-overlapping blocks, and for each i-th block, the watermarks used for recovery and authentication are generated, which are embedded into a different block according to an embedding sequence given by a permutation process. The designed scheme embeds the watermarks generated by each block within the 2-LSB, where a bit-adjustment phase is subsequently applied to increase the quality of the watermarked image. In order to increase the quality of the recovered image, we use in the post-processing stage the bilateral filter that efficiently suppresses noise preserving image edges. Additionally, in the tamper detection process high accuracy is achieved employing a hierarchical tamper detection algorithm. Finally, to solve tampering coincidence problem, three recovery watermarks are embedded in different positions to reconstruct a specific block, and a proposed inpainting algorithm is implemented to regenerate those regions affected by this problem. Simulation results demonstrate that the watermarked images appear to demonstrate higher quality, and the proposed novel scheme can reconstruct the alteration of extremely high rates (up to 80%), obtaining good quality for altered regions that are self-recovered with higher visual performance compared with a similar scheme from state of the-art methods. •High quality of the watermarked image in comparison with other schemes was confirmed.•Novel tampering detection algorithm in each RGB channel has been designed using three tamper results.•Better robustness against the tampering coincidence problem is obtained.•Better manipulation detection was achieved during authentication.