<title>Using fractal compression scheme to embed a digital signature into an image</title>

Abstract

With the increase in the number of digital networks and recording devices, digital images appear to be a material, especially still images, whose ownership is widely threatened due to the availability of simple, rapid and perfect duplication and distribution means. It is in this context that several European projects are devoted to finding a technical solution which, as it applies to still images, introduces a code or watermark into the image data itself. This watermark should not only allow one to determine the owner of the image, but also respect its quality and be difficult to revoke. An additional requirement is that the code should be retrievable by the only mean of the protected information. In this paper, we propose a new scheme based on fractal coding and decoding. In general terms, a fractal coder exploits the spatial redundancy within the image by establishing a relationship between its different parts. We describe a way to use this relationship as a means of embedding a watermark. Tests have been performed in order to measure the robustness of the technique against JPEG conversion and low pass filtering. In both cases, very promising results have been obtained.