Transform domain technique: robust watermarking for digital images

A digital image watermarking technique that is based on the human visual system (HVS) characteristics and the statistical behavior of the edge structures is presented. In this technique the watermark is generated using (i) human visual system parameters so that the watermark does not alter the perceived quality (transparency requirement) of a watermarked image and (ii) a sequence of random numbers generated from a bounded normal distribution so that the technique is robust to malicious attacks. The watermarking technique inserts the watermark into the perceptually most significant discrete cosine transform (DCT) coefficients so that the technique is (i) robust to image processing operations (such as image compression), (ii) robust to malicious watermark attacks and (iii) perceptually invisible.