Image analysis – Applications
Reexamination Certificate
1999-12-02
2004-01-13
Boudreau, Leo (Department: 2621)
Image analysis
Applications
Reexamination Certificate
active
06678389
ABSTRACT:
FIELD OF INVENTION
The present invention relates to a method and apparatus for embedding digital information in digital multimedia data. The invention also relates to a computer program product including a computer readable medium having recorded thereon a computer program for embedding digital information in digital multimedia data.
BACKGROUND OF INVENTION
Over recent decades there has been a rapid growth in computers and digital communications networks. With this growth, the illegal distribution, duplication and the manipulation of digital or digitised multimedia content have become more and more common place. Even though such activity may violate copyright laws, it is still widespread. There is thus a need to protect the rights of owners who own these original multimedia data.
Similarly, there has also been a proliferation of exchange of sensitive data over public communications networks. Recently, digital signatures have been used to verify and authenticate the integrity of such data and identity the sender of the data. However there exists a need for invisible digital signature for images, which adequately represents the content of the images and further can be used for verifying whether the signed images have been modified.
In addition, there has been an associated growth in multimedia databases. Usually the stored multimedia data needs to be annotated (captioning). If the annotation can be associated with the content permanently, it will be convenient and safe for some applications such as medical image database.
Digital watermarking techniques can be applied to the above-mentioned applications, namely, for copyright protection, multimedia content authentication and multimedia content annotation. Although visible watermarks have been previously used, there is much promise for invisible digital watermarking techniques due to its unobtrusive nature. Regardless of particular applications, the following are the basic and common requirements for invisible watermarks. The watermark should be unobtrusive and not annoying to bona-fide users. The watermark scheme should be robust to some reasonable distortions during storage and transmission (such as compression, noise addition, format conversion, and bit errors). The watermark scheme should also be robust to some artifacts caused by signal processing operations (such as noise reduction, filtering, sharpening, and colour & intensity variations) It should also be secure against typical attacks such as colluding pirates who combine multiple versions of the same multimedia content that are stamped with different watermarks. Erasing the watermark or replacing the watermark by another watermark should be technically difficult.
Although these requirements are essential to practical applications, so far no one method or system is capable of fully satisfying the above conditions due to its so many unsolved problems and challenges.
ASPECTS OF INVENTION
It is an object of the present invention to ameliorate one or more disadvantages of the prior art.
According to one aspect of the invention, there is provided a method of embedding digital information in digital multimedia data, wherein said method includes the following steps: generating one or more transforms from the digital multimedia data or a portion of the digital multimedia data, wherein said transforms are dependent on the digital multimedia data or the portion of the digital multimedia data; generating transformed digital multimedia data by applying the one or more transforms to the digital multimedia data or the portion of the digital multimedia data; embedding the digital information in the transformed digital multimedia data; and generating the digital multimedia data embedded with the digital information by applying one or more inverse transforms of the one or more transforms to the embedded transformed digital multimedia data.
According to still another aspect of the invention, there is provided a method of embedding digital information in digital multimedia data, wherein said method includes the following steps: generating one or more transforms from the digital multimedia data or a portion of the digital multimedia data, wherein said transforms are dependent on the digital multimedia data or the portion of the digital multimedia data; generating transformed digital multimedia data by applying the one or more transforms to the digital multimedia data or the portion of the digital multimedia data; embedding the digital information in the one or more transforms or their inverses; and generating the digital multimedia data embedded with the digital information by applying one or more embedded inverse transforms to the transformed digital multimedia data.
According to still another aspect of the invention, there is provided a method of embedding digital information in a digital image, wherein said method includes the following steps: partitioning the image into blocks of pixels; clustering the partitioned blocks into classes according to a homogeneity criteria; selecting one or more of the clusters in accordance with HVS analysis; generating an associated Karhunen-Loeve (K-L) transform for each selected cluster, wherein the image blocks of each selected cluster are used as a vector population for the purposes of generating the associated K-L transform; applying the associated K-L transform to the image blocks of the selected cluster to produce corresponding transformed image blocks; embedding, for each selected cluster, the digital information in the associated K-L transform; and applying, for each selected cluster, an inverse transform of the embedded associated K-L transform to the transformed image blocks of the selected cluster.
According to still another aspect of the invention, there is provided a method of embedding digital information in a digital image, wherein said method includes the following steps: partitioning the image into blocks of pixels; clustering the partitioned blocks into classes according to a homogeneity criteria; selecting one or more of the clusters in accordance with HVS analysis; generating an associated Karhunen-Loeve (K-L) transform for each selected cluster, wherein the image blocks of each selected cluster are used as a vector population for the purposes of generating the associated K-L transform; applying the associated K-L transform to the image blocks of the selected cluster to produce corresponding transformed image blocks; embedding, for each selected cluster, the digital information in the selected transformed image blocks; applying, for each selected cluster, an inverse transform of the associated K-L transform to the embedded transform image blocks of the selected cluster.
According to still another aspect of the invention, there is provided a method of embedding digital information in a digital image, wherein said method includes the following steps: partitioning the image into blocks of pixels; clustering the partitioned blocks into classes according to a homogeneity criteria; selecting one or more of the clusters in accordance with HVS analysis; generating an associated Karhunen-Loeve (K-L) transform for each selected cluster, wherein the image blocks of each selected cluster are used as a vector population for the purposes of generating the associated K-L transform; applying the associated K-L transform to the image blocks of the selected cluster to produce corresponding transformed image blocks; selecting, for each selected cluster, either the associated K-L transform or its corresponding transformed image blocks for embedding; embedding, for each selected cluster, the digital information in the selected K-L transform or the selected transformed image blocks; applying, for those selected clusters in which the digital information has been embedded in the associated K-L transform, an inverse transform of the embedded associated K-L transform to the transformed image blocks of the selected cluster; and applying, for those selected clusters in which the digital information has been embedded in the transformed image blocks, an inverse t
Deng Huijie Robert
Sun Qibin
Wu Jiankang
Boudreau Leo
Kent Ridge Digital Labs
Ladas & Parry
Lu Tom Y.
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