Comparative Analysis of Digital Image Watermarking Techniques

Abstract

This research involves in the juxtaposed assessment of 4 digital image watermarking techniques. ADW (Additive Watermarking), LSB (Least Significant Bit), DWT (Discrete Wavelet Transform), DWT-DCT (Discrete Cosine Transform)-QR (QR Decomposition). The comparison is in terms of Imperceptibility and Robustness which are evaluated implementing PSNR (Peak Signal to Noise Ratio) and NCC (Normalized Cross Correlation) respectively. 12 Attacks were simulated. The DWT technique demonstrates the highest robustness, achieving an average NCC of 0.9998 under no attacks and 0.9272 under attacks, along with a consistent PSNR of 58.0933. The DWT-DCT-QR method offers competitive robustness, with an average NCC of 0.98322 under no attacks and 0.9138 under attacks, while achieving an average PSNR of 59.72448. The ADW technique prioritizes robustness, achieving an average NCC of 0.8245 under attacks but with a lower PSNR of 32.74826 dB, indicating reduced imperceptibility. In contrast, the LSB technique achieves excellent imperceptibility with an average PSNR of 63.9774 and a perfect NCC of 0.9993 under no attacks but drops to an average NCC of 0.6568 under attacks. These results highlight the DWT and DWT-DCT-QR techniques as the most suitable for applications requiring a balance between imperceptibility and watermark robustness.