Vol. 50, Issue 4, pp. 633-647 (2020)

Abstract

A hybrid watermarking algorithm with an optical watermark image based on singular value decomposition (SVD) ghost imaging is designed. Simultaneously, the blended watermarking algorithm is designed based on 4-level discrete wavelet transform (DWT), discrete cosine transform (DCT) and singular value decomposition (SVD). The 4-level diagonal sub-band image is obtained by performing 4-level two-dimensional wavelet transform on the original image, and the coefficient matrix is produced by applying the discrete cosine transform on the 4-level diagonal sub-band image. Then, three matrices are obtained by performing the singular value decomposition on the coefficient matrix. In addition, the optical watermark image is encrypted by an SVD ghost imaging system. The system could generate a secret key, and unauthorized users could not decrypt and reconstruct the original watermark image without this key. Later the encrypted watermark image is generated into the other three matrices by singular value decomposition. Afterwards, the encrypted watermark is embedded in the host image by mutual operation of different matrices in the algorithm. Simulation results validate the feasibility of the proposed hybrid watermarking scheme.