In image watermarking, information is embedded in the original image for many reasons, such as ownership proofing, alteration detection, and/or fingerprinting, but it can also be used for real-time services such as e-payment, broadcast monitoring, and surveillance systems. For these, the data embedded must be extractable even if the image is manipulated intentionally or unintentionally. In contrast, robust techniques are the kind of watermarking that could assure the authenticity and protect the copyright. Many robust image watermarking approaches have been proposed in the last few years, and the purpose of this chapter is to provide a survey about recent relevant robust image watermarking methods existing in the literature.
TopIntroduction
The emergence of high-throughput applications in multimedia networks has a great interest after the research community, this applications is characterized by an important and voluminous amount of data compared to the traditional applications, consequently it becomes an integral part of several areas of life (military, health, education ...etc.) (Poljicak, 2011; Islam et al, 2014; Shao et al, 2016;Thilagavathi et al, 2015). However, the data security turn into a fundamental and necessary requirement which necessitates the development of new strategies; that takes into account the specific characteristics of this kinds of applications (Wang et al, 2016; Kandi et al, 2017; Jawad et al, 2013).
There are various techniques that help to develop secure architecture and software systems especially for multimedia databases systems. These techniques make it difficult for hackers to influence credibility and effectiveness of the software. Software architecture and design are very important in order to create secure software, especially also in the context of multimedia databases. A security domain is the list of objects a subject is allowed to access. More broadly defined, domains are groups of subjects and objects with similar security requirements such integrity, authenticity and confidentiality of multimedia (images, sounds and videos) in that type of systems.
Cryptography was the first solution in that direction. It is about making the content of the document unreadable and unnecessary for an unauthorized user. But it protects the document only during its transmission, which means that once a document is decoded we cannot prevent its modification or illegal reproduction (Saini, 2015; Hsu et al, 2013).
The watermarking technique has emerged as an alternative that can complement cryptography. It consist of embedding the data information into a host image (Su et al, 2013; Benoraira et al, 2015) to enhance cryptographic integrity, protect the benefits of the document and prohibit the illegal reproduction (Rahmani ete al, 2010; Liu et al, 2016; Wang et al, 2016; Arsalan et al, 2017). In the other hand, the watermarked image may face obstacles, and in some applications even the smoothest distortion in the host image is intolerable (Verma et al, 2016; Amri et al, 2016; Khan et al, 2014); for example, in the field of medical imagery, if an image is slightly modified; this may change the interpretation of the medicine, which can cause disastrous consequences. In contrast, the watermark should be resistant to the alteration introduced during either normal use (unintentional attacks), or intentional modification which used to break or remove the watermark (malicious attacks) (Tao et al, 2014; Islam et al, 2014). So, there is a strong need to employ a robust watermarking which allows full resistant to the embedded data against the majority of attacks, this type of watermarking is gaining more attention for the last few years because of its increasing uses in many applications (Jose et al, 2012)