Digital Image Watermarking Algorithm in Discrete Wavelet Transform Domain Using HVS Characteristics

Protection of digital multimedia content has become an increasingly important issue for content owners and service providers. Watermarking is identified as a major means to achieve copyright protection. This watermarking algorithm is based on the Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT). Watermark components are added to a high frequency subband by considering the human visual system (HVS) characteristics. HVS characteristics are used in this scheme to develop a robust watermarking scheme with a better tradeoff between robustness and imperceptibility. A visual mask based on HVS characteristics is used for calculating the weight factor for each wavelet coefficient of the host image. The proposed scheme was tested against mostly known threats and it proves to give good robustness. Also it still gives a high quality watermarked image. MATLAB Program was used to perform the watermarking task.