Circular interpretation of bijective transformations in lossless watermarking for media asset management

TLDR

Reversible or lossless watermarking is needed to embed management information in losslessly processed media, yet existing methods are limited to specific images, strict lossless contexts, or produce visual artifacts. The study analyzes the scope of lossless watermarking, critiques early reversible attempts, and proposes a circular interpretation of bijective transformations to meet quality and functionality requirements. The authors employ a circular interpretation of bijective transformations, analyzing specificity and application scope to design a reversible watermarking scheme that satisfies all quality and functionality criteria. Bench tests confirm the validity of the proposed approach.

Abstract

The need for reversible or lossless watermarking methods has been highlighted in the literature to associate subliminal management information with losslessly processed media and to enable their authentication. The paper first analyzes the specificity and the application scope of lossless watermarking methods. It explains why early attempts to achieve reversibility are not satisfactory. They are restricted to well-chosen images, strictly lossless context and/or suffer from annoying visual artifacts. Circular interpretation of bijective transformations is proposed to implement a method that fulfills all quality and functionality requirements of lossless watermarking. Results of several bench tests demonstrate the validity of the approach.