Wavelet versus DCT - Based spread spectrum watermarking of image databases

This paper addresses the issue of oblivious robust watermarking, within the framework of colour still image database protection. We present an original method which complies with all the requirements nowadays imposed to watermarking applications: robustness (e.g. low-pass filtering, print & scan, StirMark), transparency (both quality and fidelity), low probability of false alarm, obliviousness and multiple bit recovering. The mark is generated from a 64 bit message (be it a logo, a serial number, etc.) by means of a Spread Spectrum technique and is embedded into DWT (Discrete Wavelet Transform) domain, into certain low frequency coefficients, selected according to the hierarchy of their absolute values. The best results were provided by the (9,7) bi-orthogonal transform. The experiments were carried out on 1200 image sequences, each of them of 32 images. Note that these sequences represented several types of images: natural, synthetic, medical, etc. and each time we obtained the same good results. These results are compared with those we already obtained for the DCT domain, the differences being pointed out and discussed.