Optimization-based Image Watermarking Algorithm Using a Maximum-Likelihood Decoding Scheme in the Complex Wavelet Domain

Most existing wavelet-based multiplicative watermarking methods are affected by geometric attacks to a certain extent. A serious limitation of wavelet-based multiplicative watermarking is its sensitivity to rotation, scaling, and translation. In this study, we propose an image watermarking method by using dual-tree complex wavelet transform with a multi-objective optimization approach. We embed the watermark information into an image region with a high entropy value via a multiplicative strategy. The major contribution of this work is that the trade-off between imperceptibility and robustness is simply solved by using the multi-objective optimization approach, which applies the watermark error probability and an image quality metric to establish a multi-objective optimization function. In this manner, the optimal embedding factor obtained by solving the multi-objective function effectively controls watermark strength. For watermark decoding, we adopt a maximum likelihood decision criterion. Finally, we evaluate the performance of the proposed method by conducting simulations on benchmark test images. Experiment results demonstrate the imperceptibility of the proposed method and its robustness against various attacks, including additive white Gaussian noise, JPEG compression, scaling, rotation, and combined attacks.