Title: A DWT-DCT-SVD-based robust watermark method for image copyright protection

Authors: Prachee Dewangan; Debabala Swain; Monalisa Swain

Addresses: Department of Computer Science, Rama Devi Women's University, India ' Department of Computer Science, Rama Devi Women's University, India ' Department of Computer Science, Shailabala Women's (Auto) College, Cuttack, India

Abstract: Due to advanced digitisation, digital contents are easily spread via the internet and cause a lot of copyright concerns. To safeguard the copyright in the source image, watermarking focuses on covertly encrypting hidden data in the main image. This study presents a novel watermarking technique based on discrete wavelet transformation (DWT), discrete cosine transformation (DCT) and singular value decomposition (SVD). The approach first performs multilevel DWT on the cover image before applying the DCT on the low-frequency sub-band. Second, SVD is applied to the watermark image as well as the DCT coefficients of the source image. Thirdly, singular values from SVD operations are used to embed watermark information. In this approach, watermark identification and extraction are successfully done. Compared to the other methods, experimental outcomes show that the proposed method offers better performance in robustness and imperceptibility against different attacks.

Keywords: image watermarking; discrete wavelet transformation; DWT; discrete cosine transformation; DCT; singular value decomposition; SVD.

DOI: 10.1504/IJESDF.2025.145876

International Journal of Electronic Security and Digital Forensics, 2025 Vol.17 No.3, pp.404 - 418

Received: 21 May 2023
Accepted: 22 Jun 2023
Published online: 30 Apr 2025 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article