Adaptive Watermarking Scheme for Enhanced Image Authentication and Restoration

Authors

Merna E. Ibrahim, Department of Electronics and Communications Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Mansoura University, Mansoura 35516, Egypt
Mohamed G. Abdelfattah, Department of Electronics and Communications Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Mansoura University, Mansoura 35516, EgyptFollow
Mohamed A. Mohamed, Department of Electronics and Communications Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Mansoura University, Mansoura 35516, Egypt

Corresponding Author

Mohamed G. Abdelfattah

Subject Area

Electronics and Communication Engineering

Article Type

Original Study

Abstract

Traditional fragile watermarking schemes often struggle to balance tamper detection accuracy, image quality, and processing speed. This paper presents a novel adaptive fragile watermarking scheme that leverages Canny-edge detection to dynamically adjust watermark embedding based on image features. The proposed approach classifies image regions into smooth and dense areas. Larger 4×4 blocks are employed in smooth regions, prioritizing visual quality and processing speed, while smaller 2×2 blocks are used in edge and dense regions to enhance tamper detection accuracy. This adaptive strategy effectively balances competing factors, resulting in superior recovered image quality compared to fixed-block schemes. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed scheme. Watermarked images exhibit an average PSNR of 46.5 dB, maintaining high visual quality. The scheme achieves over 97% tamper detection accuracy even with significant tampering exceeding 90%. Furthermore, the proposed method demonstrates robustness against collage attacks and outperforms existing techniques in both tamper detection and visual quality.

Keywords

Fragile Watermarking, Image authentication, Canny Edge Detection, Tamper Detection, Tamper restoration

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Recommended Citation

Ibrahim, Merna E.; Abdelfattah, Mohamed G.; and Mohamed, Mohamed A. (2025) "Adaptive Watermarking Scheme for Enhanced Image Authentication and Restoration," Mansoura Engineering Journal: Vol. 50 : Iss. 4 , Article 2.
Available at: https://doi.org/10.58491/2735-4202.3269