Title: A blind watermarking algorithm for fingerprint images based on contourlet transform

Authors: Kishore Kumar N.K.; V.S. Sheeba

Addresses: Department of Electronics and Communication, Ilahia College of Engineering and Technology, Mulavoor, Kerala, PIN 686673, India ' Department of Electronics and Communication, Government Engineering College, Thrissur, Kerala, PIN 680009, India

Abstract: We present a novel blind biometric watermarking algorithm based on contourlet transform in this paper. The host image is decomposed into a series of multiscale, local and directional subimages using contourlet transform. A high frequency directional sub-band which has the highest energy is used for watermarking. At the same time, the original binary watermark is scrambled by two-dimensional Arnold transform, and then embedded into the selected directional sub-band. The signs of the contourlet coefficients are modified depending on the watermark bit. The watermark retrieving algorithm is a blind detection process, and it does not need the original image. Iris code is taken as the watermark and finger print image is taken as the host image. The simulation results show that the proposed watermarking algorithm gives good perceptual transparency and is able to resist additive channel noise attacks, cropping, histogram equalisation, gamma correction, etc.

Keywords: blind watermarking; Arnold transform; contourlet transform; peak SNR; signal to noise ratio; PSNR; pattern recognition; fingerprint images; biometrics; iris code; simulation; information hiding; security.

DOI: 10.1504/IJAPR.2014.065771

International Journal of Applied Pattern Recognition, 2014 Vol.1 No.3, pp.242 - 256

Received: 29 Mar 2013
Accepted: 16 Sep 2013

Published online: 29 Nov 2014 *

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