Geometrically invariant watermarking: synchronization through circular Hough transform

This paper addresses a geometrically invariant watermarking method for digital images. Most previous watermarking algorithms perform weakly against geometric distortions, which desynchronize the location for the inserted watermark. Watermark synchronization, which is a process for finding the location for watermark insertion and detection, is crucial for robust watermarking. In this paper, we propose a watermarking method that is robust to geometric distortions. In order to synchronize the location for watermark insertion and detection, we use circular Hough transform, which extracts circular features that are invariant to geometric distortions. The circular features are then watermarked using additive way on the spatial domain. Our method belongs to the category of blind watermarking techniques, because we do not need the original image during detection. Experimental results support the contention that our method is useful and considerably robust against both geometric distortion attacks and signal processing attacks as listed in Stirmark 3.1.