Fragile Watermarking Based on Encoding of the Zeroes of the $z$-Transform

In this paper, a new fragile watermarking method for digital image authentication is proposed based on the zero locations of the z-transform. The z-transform domain is a new transform space for fragile watermark embedding. Our watermarking method is designed by exploiting the sensitivity of the positions of the zeroes of the z-transform around the unit circle to any change made on the host image. The watermarking system can localize the portions of a watermarked image that have been tampered with with high accuracy. In addition, the newly proposed scheme is more secure than normal least-significant bits-based fragile watermarking techniques. Experimental results as well as the theoretical analysis demonstrated the fragility and accuracy of the new method.