A fragile watermarking technique for image authentication using singular value decomposition

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a block SVD-based fragile watermarking technique for image authentication. Using this technique, we can detect any modification made to the image and indicate the specific locations where the modification was made. We utilize the singular value of image block as the authentication data. The image is divided into same size blocks, and authentication data is inserted into the LSB plane of each block. Authentication data is produced from XOR operation between watermark image and binary bits obtained from singular value of one block image. Singular value is converted to binary bits using modular arithmetic. Security of this technique resides on two keys, so in the case where the keys are incorrect, the extraction process will return an image that resembles noise, the same case as if the image is not watermarked, or the watermarked image is modified. If the unmodified watermarked image is used, the extraction process will return the correct watermark image. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2004.