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3, SEPTEMBER 2011

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Improved Embedding for Prediction-Based Reversible Watermarking

Dinu Coltuc, Member, IEEE
AbstractThis paper aims at reducing the embedding distortion of prediction error expansion reversible watermarking. Instead of embedding the entire expanded difference into the current pixel, the difference is split between the current pixel and its prediction context. The modication of the context generates an increase of the following prediction errors. Global optimization is obtained by tuning the amount of data embedded into context pixels. Prediction error expansion reversible watermarking schemes based on median edge detector (MED), gradient-adjusted predictor (GAP), and a simplied GAP version, SGAP, are investigated. Improvements are obtained for all the predictors. Notably good results are obtained for SGAP-based schemes. The improved SGAP appears to outperform GAP-based reversible watermarking. Index TermsGradient-adjusted predictor (GAP), improved embedding, median edge detector (MED), prediction error expansion, reversible watermarking, simplied GAP (SGAP).

I. INTRODUCTION

EVERSIBLE watermarking (also known as lossless, distortion-free, invertible) completely removes the watermark and exactly recovers the original signal/image. During the last decade, the reversible watermarking has been an active research domain. So far, several approaches have been proposed. The direct approach to reversible watermarking uses lossless compression to substitute parts of the host with their compressed versions and the watermark data. In order to ensure the imperceptibility of the watermarking, the substituted parts should be in the least signicant bits area, i.e., providing rather low compression ratios. The best performances reported so far [1], [2] are below 1 bit per pixel (bpp). A more productive approach is the histogram shifting reversible watermarking which originates from the work of Ni et al. [3]. In the original approach, a gap is created near the most populated histogram bin by shifting image graylevels with one position. The pixels of the most populated histogram bin are further used to encode a bit of data. More precisely, they are kept unchanged when a bit of 0 should be encoded, or ipped into the free graylevel to encode a 1. Since image histograms are rather evenly distributed, the embedding capacity provided in a single embedding level is low. The capacity can be increased by
Manuscript received November 24, 2010; revised March 15, 2011; accepted April 12, 2011. Date of publication April 21, 2011; date of current version August 17, 2011. This work was supported by UEFISCDI Romania, Grant ID_2200/2008. The associate editor coordinating the review of this manuscript and approving it for publication was Dr. Adnan M. Alattar. The author is with the Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Valahia University, Targoviste, Romania (e-mail: coltuc@valahia.ro). Digital Object Identier 10.1109/TIFS.2011.2145372

using sharper histograms as, for instance, the histogram of adjacent pixels [4], [5], or, more generally, other prediction error histograms [6][10], etc. For natural images, due to the high spatial correlation, the prediction error is Laplacian distributed. The better the predictor, the sharper the histogram and consequently, the higher the embedding capacity. In the rst level of embedding, by modifying pixels with at most one graylevel, such schemes introduce a very low distortion. While the capacity of the rst embedding level is rather low, by multiple embedding, more than 1 bpp can be obtained. Obviously, by multiple embedding, not only the capacity increases, but also the distortion. A very fruitful research direction, introduced by Tian [11], is the difference expansion (DE) reversible watermarking. DE creates space by expanding a difference. The data and the auxiliary information are further added to the expanded difference and, if no overow or underow appears, they are embedded into the image. The expanded difference is the one between adjacent pixels [11][15], original pixels and predicted pixels [16][23], original image pixels and the same pixels estimated by interpolation [24], pixels of a block and the median value of the block [25], etc. Besides the extension to prediction error expansion, interpolation error expansion, and so on, several other improvements of the DE-based watermarking schemes can be mentioned. The use of histogram shifting of Thodi et al. [17] reduces the size of the additional information. Similarly, the additional information is reduced by extending the DE on groups of three or four pixels [12]. The use of sorting [13], [23] reduces the distortions introduced by the watermarking. Regarding capacity, in the rst level of embedding, the original DE scheme of Tian with embedding into disjoint pairs is bounded by 0.5 bpp. The prediction error expansion proposed by Thodi et al., with embedding into each pixel, provides in the rst level of embedding up to 1 bpp [16], [17]. The multibit embedding [15] provides into the rst level of embedding more than 2 bpp. Besides the three directions mentioned above, there are other approaches which are worth mentioning, too. For instance, in [26], one bit is embedded by simply adding an integer whitenoise watermark sequence. By using arithmetic modulo 256, not only overow or underow is eliminated, but also reversibility is obtained. The detection is performed by correlation and the recovery of the original follows by subtracting modulo 256 the watermark sequence. The scheme exhibits robustness, but the wraparound of modulo arithmetic generates salt-and-pepper noise. The circular interpretation scheme of Vleeschouwer et al. [27] divides disjoint image blocks in two equal size regions randomly selected and embeds 1 bit per block by circularly shifting the histogram of one region. As for [26], salt-and-

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pepper noise can be generated. Finally, good results are reported by the integer-to-integer wavelet-based reversible watermarking of Lee et al. [28]. Prediction error expansion (PE), introduced by Thodi et al. [16], [17], is one of the most popular schemes of reversible watermarking. As said above, the PE scheme is inspired by Tians DE. Instead of expanding the difference between two adjacent pixels, the PE scheme expands the difference between a pixel and its estimate. So far, several versions of PE reversible watermarking have been proposed [17][23], etc. In order to improve the performances of the PE schemes, the research focuses on the reduction of the size of the auxiliary information, the reduction of the prediction error, and the reduction of the embedding distortion. This paper aims at reducing the embedding distortion for PE reversible watermarking. The basic idea of the proposed approach is to split the expanded difference between the current pixel and its prediction context. The embedding is performed at a lower distortion than the simple embedding of the expanded difference into the current pixel. At detection, the same expanded error is recovered and the extraction of the embedded data and the recovery of the original pixels follow. Embedding data into the prediction context may diminish the performances of further prediction. The increase of the prediction error increases as well the distortion introduced by the watermarking. The optimization of the embedding should be tuned in order to surpass the loss caused by prediction error increase. The proposed approach is tested for the case of median edge detector (MED) predictor [29], gradient-adjusted predictor (GAP [31]), and SGAP, a simplied version of GAP [8]. The optimum embedding for a single pixel is rst analyzed. Then the global improvement is investigated. Improvements are obtained in each case. The most signicant improvements appear for the SGAP-based reversible watermarking. While the SGAP scheme is known to provide slightly lower performances than the GAP-based one, the improved SGAP outperforms the GAP-based reversible watermarking. The outline of the paper is as follows. The improved embedding is introduced in Section II. The improvement of reversible watermarking schemes based on MED, GAP, and SGAP predictors are discussed in Sections IIIV. Experimental results are provided in Section VI. Finally, the conclusions are drawn in Section VII.

This means , i.e., the prediction error and the bit to be embedded are added to the graylevel of the pixel. At detection, if the prediction context is not altered, the same is computed. The embedded data is immediately recovered as the least signicant bit (LSB) of , namely (2) represents the greatest integer less than or equal to . where Once is available, immediately follows: . The condition to retrieve the same prediction context is solved by taking opposite scan directions for embedding and detection. B. Optimized Embedding Let . From (1), it follows that is entirely embedded into the current pixel. The basic idea of our approach is to reduce the distortion by embedding not only into the pixel , but also into its context. The minimization of the square error is considered. The embedding of any data into the pixels of modies the estimation . From (2), in order to extract and to further recover the original pixel , it appears that not the exact value of is needed, but of the difference . Thus, if is modied, should be modied, too. Without any loss of generality, the modication of the context can be written as (3) where is a certain fraction of , , with xed, . Since pixels take integer values, is rounded to the nearest integer: (4) For the moment, let us consider that the integer function modies some pixels of by adding/subtracting . Obviously, is invertible: (5) Let be the estimate of on the modied . In order to preserve the difference between the modied pixel and its estimate, the new value of becomes (6) The embedded data, , is extracted with (2). The reversibility of the modied scheme immediately follows. is computed by (4), where is (7) Finally, the original context is recovered with (5) and tained as in Section II-A. is ob-

II. IMPROVED EMBEDDING Before introducing the proposed improvement, the basic principle of PE reversible watermarking [16] is briey reminded. A. Prediction Error Expansion Let be a pixel and let be an estimate of computed on , a neighborhood of . Let further be the data bit to be embedded. Provided that no overow/underow appears, the pixel is replaced by , where (1)

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The embedding of a pixel by (3)(6) distorts both the pixel and its context. The proposed approach is of interest if it introduces less distortion than the classical PE scheme. If the square error is further considered, this can be written as
Fig. 1. Context for MED, GAP, and SGAP predictors.

(8) where the sum is taken for the corresponding pixels of the context of . In this framework, we focus on two problems. The rst one is the optimization of the embedding error for one pixel: (9) The second problem is the optimization of the global error introduced by the watermarking. By solving (9), the value (equivalently, ) is found such that the square error introduced by embedding the pixel is minimized. After the embedding of pixel , a fraction of the prediction error propagates into the initial pixel context. The modied pixels of the initial context are further predicted. Such modications may decrease the correlation between pixels and, consequently, worsen the performance of the prediction scheme. The larger the value of (consequently, of ), the stronger the risk to decrease the correlation among the pixels and to increase the prediction error. The decrease of the distortion by optimizing the embedding for one pixel may increase the distortion induced by the prediction of its successors. Therefore, one should trade-off between the distortion introduced by the embedding and the one introduced by the prediction. The optimization of the global embedding error can be found by varying , i.e., in . The modied scheme described above depends on and on . The function is meant to dene the procedure and (equivalently, the parameter ) to control it. The function splits the data to be embedded between the current pixel and its context and controls the amount of data to be embedded. III. IMPROVED EMBEDDING FOR MED PREDICTOR The prediction error expansion scheme of Section II-A works for any predictor. In [16] and [17], as in many other schemes, the MED predictor is used. MED is a high-performance predictor already used in JPEG-LS standard [29]. With MED, , the estimate of pixel , is if if otherwise (10) In [16], prediction error-expansion is used in connection with a location map as in the basic Tians DE. In [17], besides the simple location map, a histogram shifting scheme is introduced. The protection against overow/underow because of shifting is ensured by a location map. This latter map achieves better lossless compression ratios than the simple location map of not embedded pixels. In order to put in practice the modied embedding of Section II-B for the MED predictor-based reversible watermarking, the function should be dened. From (10), it appears that depends on the ordering among the context pixels. If the ordering on changes, the new prediction, , may signicantly differ from and consequently, the prediction error may considerably increase. The ordering on is preserved by subtracting from each context pixels. We shall therefore consider dened as (11) For the modied context, the prediction is more, (6) becomes . Further(12) At detection, is recovered as the LSB of . Then, and are computed by (7) and (4), respectively. Furthermore, the original pixel and its context are recovered by inverting (11) and (12): (13) When the expanded difference is entirely embedded into the current pixel, the square error introduced by watermarking is . Let us further determine in order to minimize the square error. One has . The value of which minimizes is found by solving the equation . The solution gives a minimum value . Equivalently, by writing , it appears that the minimum value, , is obtained for , i.e., for . The global optimum is found by varying . The case corresponds to the classical PE scheme, while corresponds to the optimized embedding discussed above. IV. IMPROVED EMBEDDING FOR GAP PREDICTOR The GAP is a major part of context-based, adaptive, lossless image coding (CALIC) algorithm [31]. The GAP predictor is more complex than the MED one. The prediction context is extended from 3 to 7 pixels (Fig. 1). Not only the existence of a horizontal/vertical edge is detected, but also its strength (weak,

where , , and are the right, lower, and lower-diagonal neighbors of (Fig. 1). The predictor tends to select in cases where a vertical edge exists right to the current location, in cases of a horizontal edge below , or if no edge is detected. The same predictor was also regarded as the median of three simple linear predictors: , , and [30]. The name MED is in fact a combination of the two interpretations [29].

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normal, or sharp). The detection is based on local gradients and experimentally determined thresholds. More precisely, the horizontal and vertical gradients are estimated as follows: (14) and (15) Let be (16) Based on the values of , the pixel if if if if if if if where , the predictor for smooth context, is (18) From (17), it appears that can take non-integer values. In order to be used in prediction expansion reversible watermarking, the predictor should be rst rounded to integer values. Furthermore, the prediction expansion scheme follows as for the MED predictor. The reversible watermarking schemes using GAP predictor outperform the ones based on MED predictor [7], [8]. The improved embedding discussed in Section III immediately extends to GAP-based schemes. The function of (11) is directly extended to the entire context used by GAP. It is easy to observe that (14)(16) are invariant to the subtraction of . From (18), one gets instead of and, nally, the predicted value changes to . In order to keep the prediction error unchanged, the current pixel should be additively embedded with . The optimization of the embedding for one pixel immediately follows. The square error for embedding into the current pixel and its context is . The error is minimized for , i.e., for . The minimum value is . The global optimum should be obtained for a lower value of . Therefore, the optimization will be done by varying in (0,0.125). Compared with the case of MED-based reversible watermarking, a lower gain is obtained for the optimized embedding of a single pixel. This suggests that a lower improvement is expected for the entire embedding, too. V. IMPROVED EMBEDDING FOR SGAP PREDICTOR The GAP predictor outperforms the MED one in reversible watermarking schemes, but at the cost of an increase in mathematical complexity. Quite similar results can be obtained by using the SGAP predictor, a simplied version of GAP [8]. The is estimated by

SGAP is the restriction of GAP at the case of smooth context. Thus, the context is limited at 4 pixels, , , , and (Fig. 1). The predicted value is the rounded , , where is given by (18). We tested two versions of SGAP prediction error expansion watermarking, one with location map, the other with histogram shifting. The reversible watermarking schemes based on the SGAP predictor provided slightly lower performances than the schemes based on the GAP predictor and outperformed the ones based on the MED predictor. Let us further investigate the improvement of the embedding for the case of SGAP-based reversible watermarking schemes. Due to the fact that SGAP is a linear scheme, i.e., the switching scheme is eliminated, there is much more exibility than for MED or GAP. Thus, the function can select for data embedding any number of pixels out of the four ones. The investigation of such schemes follows. A. One Pixel

(17)

Let us consider the subtraction of from pixel . After prediction context modication, the predicted value becomes . Consequently, the current pixel should be transformed to . The distortion introduced by the embedding of the current pixel is . The minimum distortion, , is obtained for , i.e., for . The embedding into is equivalent to the embedding into . If pixel is selected for embedding into the context , the predicted value becomes . One has . Furthermore, a minimum distortion of is obtained for . Obviously, the embedding into is less efcient than the one into . The embedding into corresponds to the case of the embedding into , with the difference that the embedding is done by adding, not by subtracting, i.e., . B. Two Pixels , , it Let us select and . By taking follows and, consequently, . The embedding error for the current pixel, , takes the minimum value, , when . Therefore, one should investigate , with . The combinations between a pixel selected from , and the other from , give a minimum error of , greater than the one obtained for the case of embedding into and . Finally, the selection of and provides the least improvement. C. Three Pixels Let us select , , and . By subtracting from the selected pixels, the prediction becomes . The current pixel is transformed to . The square error due to embedding of the current pixel is . The minimum error, , is obtained for . This corresponds to the investigation of for . The case , , and gives the same results by considering the subtraction of from and and the addition to .

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The selection of , , and (equivalently, , , and ) gives slightly lower performances. Thus, by adding to and by subtracting it from and , one gets , . This gives which has a minimum value of obtained for . D. Four Pixels Let us take , , , and . It follows and . The embedding distortion for the current pixel is . The minimum, , is obtained for , i.e., . As above, one should look for the global optimization by taking . The direct extension of the improvement discussed for MED and GAP, namely the subtraction of from the entire context, gives lower performances. Thus, one gets , , , . Before going any further, a comment should be made. For MED, GAP, and SGAP (second case of V-D), is subtracted from each context pixel and is added to the current pixel. If there are pixels into the context, the embedding square error is . The optimum value, , is obtained for . Otherwise stated, the larger the number of embedded pixels of the context, the lesser the improvement. Finally, let us evaluate the mathematical complexity demanded by the proposed improved embedding for MED, GAP, and SGAP. For the case of SGAP-based scheme, we investigate only the efcient schemes which provide square errors less than . Let SGAP2 be the embedding into and of Section V-B; SGAP3 be the embedding into , , and of Section V-C; and, nally, let SGAP4 be the embedding into the full context discussed in the rst paragraph of Section V-D. The computation of involves the multiplication of an integer by a real number and the rounding of the result. By using xed-point arithmetic, the multiplication becomes an integer multiplication. Before multiplication, is scaled by an arithmetic shift to the left. The rounding can be approached as the addition of 1/2 (integer addition in xed-point arithmetic) followed by a truncation, i.e., an arithmetic shift to the right. The embedding of the rounded into each context pixel means an integer subtraction. The embedding into the current pixel needs one subtraction and one addition for MED, GAP, and SGAP2. It should be noticed that subtractions and additions are operations of the same mathematical complexity. For the case of SGAP3, not , but should be subtracted. The multiplication by 5/4 of can be approached as the addition of and with the observation that the division by 4 is equivalent to an arithmetic shift with two positions to the right. Compared with the division, the arithmetic shift is an operation of lower complexity. Therefore, the modication of the current pixel for SGAP3 needs four subtractions and one arithmetic shift. Similarly, the multiplication by 3/2 in SGAP4 can be approached by two additions and one arithmetic shift with one position. The computation of the rounded is common for all the PE schemes discussed above and needs one multiplication, one

TABLE I NUMBER OF OPERATIONS PER PIXEL FOR EMBEDDING IMPROVEMENT ON MED, GAP, AND SGAP

Fig. 2. Classical graylevel test images: Lena, Jet, and Mandril.

addition, and one arithmetic shift. For the embedding of the rounded , the MED case demands ve extra integer additions and the GAP case demands nine extra additions. The improved SGAP2, SGAP3, and SGAP4 need four additions, seven additions and one arithmetic shift, eight additions and one arithmetic shift, respectively. The decoding is of the same mathematical complexity as the embedding. The number of operations per embedded pixel for the improvement of MED, GAP, and SGAP-based reversible watermarking schemes is summarized in Table I. To conclude, the lower mathematical complexity is entailed for the improvement of SGAP2 and of MED schemes. VI. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS We investigate the results of the proposed improvement for reversible watermarking schemes based on MED, GAP, and SGAP predictors. For each predictor, two basic implementations are considered, namely a location map implementation and a histogram shifting one. JBIG-I is used for the lossless compression of the location map for the rst implementation and of the overow/underow map for the second one. For both implementations, a simple threshold distortion control scheme is used, i.e., the capacity of the scheme is controlled by embedding only the pixels where the prediction error is less than a threshold. In order to be available at detection, the parameter is included in the header. A. Test Images Two sets of images are considered. The rst one is composed of three classical graylevel test images of size 512 512, Lena, Jet, and Mandrill (Fig. 2). The selected images have different statistics. Thus, Jet has very large uniform areas, texture and rather low contrast, Mandrill contains mainly texture, and Lena combines uniform areas with texture. All of the three test images are very often used in the reversible watermarking literature. Most of the classical test images used in reversible watermarking literature were digitized in the 1970s. Some of them are scans of magazine pictures as, for instance, Elaine, Boat (http://sipi.usc.edu/database/). Such images have a ne-grained texture due to halftoning. Other images are of low resolution

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Fig. 3. Graylevel versions of Kodak test images 124: from left to right and from top to bottom.

(see, from the same database, House, Girl, etc.). This motivated us to consider a second image test set of good quality. The second set is the Kodak test set composed of 24 true color (24 bits) images of sizes 512 768. As far as we know, these images have been released by the Eastman Kodak Company for unrestricted usage. The images are provided in Portable Network Graphics (PNG) format at http://www.r0k.us/graphics/kodak/. Graylevel versions of the full color test images have been computed as (19) where, for the pixel located at coordinates , , , and , are the red, green, and blue components, respectively. Obviously, is rounded to integer values. The graylevel versions of the Kodak test images are presented in Fig. 3. B. Results on MED The rst experiment investigates the results obtained for MED-based reversible watermarking by using a location map implementation (MED-LM). The PSNR with respect to the bit-rate in a single embedding level is determined. The original version of MED-LM is the basic prediction error expansion with location map implementation of Thodi et al. [16] (equivalently, P1 algorithm of [17]). The improved MED-LM is determined by optimization with respect to . For each value of the threshold, the maximum PSNR is obtained by varying the parameter from 0 to with an increment of 0.005. The results obtained for the classical test images are plotted in Fig. 4 (top). The solid lines represent the results for the optimized embedding, while the dashed lines represent the ones for the original location map version of [16] and [17]. The average improvements are as follows: 0.39 dB for Lena (the maximum improvement is of 1.02 dB and decreases up to 0.26 dB), 0.67 dB for Jet (maximum improvement 1.77 dB, minimum 0.27 dB), and 0.55 dB for Mandrill (maximum improvement 0.57 dB, minimum improvement 0.49 dB). The loss in performance is completely insignicant if, instead of varying for each threshold, a constant is considered for all the thresholds. Thus, the best results are obtained on Lena for , on Jet for , and nally, on Mandrill for . These corresponding best results are indistinguishable

Fig. 4. PSNR with respect to embedding bit-rate on the classical test images for MED with location map (top) and histogram shifting (bottom): optimized (solid) and classical schemes (dashed).

from the optimized ones of Fig. 4. The average loss is less than 0.02 dB for Lena and less than 0.01 dB for the other two images. The same experiment was performed on the second data set. The average improvement obtained for the 24 test images is 0.54 dB. The best average results are obtained for image 5 (1.10 dB) and for image 1 (0.83 dB). The minimum improvement, 0.25 dB, is obtained for images 9 and 10. As above, the average loss in performance because of constant is negligible. The loss is of 0.01 dB (the corresponding average gain is 0.53 dB). The parameter ranges from 0.115 (image 13) to 0.24 (image 24). The average is 0.154. The next experiment investigates the results obtained for histogram shifting implementation, MED-HS. The comparisons with the original histogram shifting implementation [17, algorithm P2] on the three classical test images are presented in Fig. 4 (bottom). The average improvements are lower than the ones obtained for the MED-LM implementation. Thus, the average improvement for Lena is 0.26 dB (the maximum improvement is of 1.01 dB and decreases up to almost 0 dB), for Jet one gets 0.40 dB (maximum improvement 1.74 dB, minimum 0 dB), and, for Mandrill, an average of 0.39 dB with a maximum improvement of 0.54 dB and a minimum one of 0 dB. The values of for maximum improvements are: 0.14 for Lena corresponding to an average gain of 0.24 dB, 0.165 for Jet with an average gain of 0.39 dB, and 0.15 for Mandrill for a gain of 0.36 dB. The loss is slightly larger for Mandrill, around 0.03 dB, but still negligible. Lower performances are obtained for the second data set, too. The average improvement is of 0.30 dB. The maximum improvements are obtained for images 5 and 1 (0.83 dB and 0.60 dB, respectively), while the minimum appear for images 10 and 9 (0.10 dB and 0.12 dB, respectively). The improvement is greater at high embedding bit-rates than at low bit-rates. This is still more visible for histogram shifting

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TABLE II REZULTS ON GRAYLEVEL VERSION OF KODAK TEST IMAGES

implementation. The improvement depends on the embedding threshold. At high bit-rates, there are more embedded pixels and consequently a larger threshold, hence a greater improvement. Histogram shifting schemes need less additional data than location map ones, i.e., the same capacity can be obtained by embedding less pixels and, consequently, at a lower threshold. This is very pregnant at low embedding bit-rates, where histogram shifting schemes largely outperform the location map ones. The best performances are obtained towards 1 bpp. In this respect, for the Kodak image set, we provide the results at 0.95 bpp (Table II). For the MED-LM, the average gain at 0.95 bpp is 0.84 dB and the maximum gain is 2.30 db (image 3). For the MED-HS, one gets an average gain of 0.85 dB. The maximum gain is 2.44 dB (image 3). C. Results on GAP As expected, the improvements on GAP-based reversible watermarking are considerably lower than the ones on MED-based schemes. For the location map-based scheme, GAP-LM, one gets an average improvement of 0.15 dB for Lena (the maximum improvement is of 0.41 dB), 0.22 dB for Jet with a maximum improvement of 0.67 dB, and 0.15 dB for Mandrill with a maximum improvement of 0.25 dB. The improvements obtained for histogram shifting implementation, GAP-HS, are even lower. Thus, one gets 0.04 dB for Lena with a maximum improvement of 0.38 dB, 0.11 dB for Jet (maximum improvement 0.65 dB), and 0.4 dB for Mandrill (with a maximum improvement of 0.12 dB). The average improvement on the second data set for GAP-LM is of 0.09 dB and the one for GAP-HS is of 0.01 dB. As it can be seen, the results on high-quality images are poorer than on standard graylevel images. The results at 0.95 bpp are as follows: an average gain of 0.04 dB and a maximum one of 0.73 dB (image 5) for GAP-LM, an average gain of 0.03 dB and a maximum one of 0.37 dB (image 5) for GAP-HS. D. Results on SGAP The analysis of Section V provides multiple choices for the selection of the context pixels to be embedded. Let us further consider only SGAP2 (embedding into and ), SGAP3 (embedding into , , and ), and SGAP4 (embedding into the full context of V-D, rst paragraph).
Fig. 5. PSNR with respect to embedding bit-rate for location map (LM) and histogram shifting (HS) implementation of original (dashed line) and optimized (solid line) SGAP versions on Lena (top), Jet (middle), and Mandrill (bottom).

The results obtained on the three classical graylevel images for the location map implementations are shown in Fig. 5. On average, the optimized SGAP2-LM gives an improvement of 0.50 dB for Lena, 1.37 dB for Jet, and 0.92 dB for Mandrill. The maximum improvements on the three test images are 1.64 dB, 4.38 dB, and 1.07 dB, respectively. The optimized SGAP3-LM gives 0.87 dB for Lena with a maximum improvement of 2.07 dB, 1.50 dB for Jet with maximum improvement of 3.95 dB, and 0.98 dB for Mandrill (maximum improvement 1.07 dB). Finally, the optimized SGAP4-LM gives 0.27 dB for Lena (maximum 1.09 dB), 0.69 dB for Jet (maximum 2.68 dB), and 0.60 dB for Mandrill with a maximum improvement of 0.67 dB. The histogram shifting implementations on the three classical graylevel images give the following results. The optimized SGAP2-HS gives 0.36 dB for Lena (maximum 1.74 dB), 1.16 dB for Jet (maximum 4.92 dB), and 0.81 dB for Mandrill with a maximum improvement of 1.15 dB. The optimized SGAP3-HS gives 0.54 dB for Lena with a maximum of 2.24 dB, 1.07 dB for Jet (maximum improvement 4.50 dB), and 0.84 dB for Mandrill (maximum improvement 1.23 dB). Finally, the optimized SGAP4-HS gives 0.15 dB for Lena (maximum 1.31 dB), 0.51

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The average is 0.224 with a minimum of 0.172 (image 2) and a maximum of 0.267 (image 12). Finally, at 0.95 bpp, one gets an average gain of 1.95 dB (SGAP3-LM) and 2.06 dB (SGAP3-HS) with a maximum gain of 3.92 dB (SGAP3-LM) and 4.07 dB (SGAP3-HS), both for image 7. E. GAP Versus SGAP The prediction error obtained for GAP is less than or equal to the one for SGAP. Consequently, the GAP-based reversible watermarking schemes outperform the SGAP ones. This is true for the classical schemes, namely without the proposed improved embedding. From Section VI-C and D, it appears that the improvements obtained for GAP are considerably lower than the ones obtained for SGAP schemes. Therefore, one can expect to have better results for the improved SGAP schemes than for the GAP ones. Let us compare next the results on the 24 test images for location map and histogram shifting implementations of GAP and SGAP schemes with and without the proposed optimized embedding. Without improvement, GAP-LM outperforms SGAP-LM. The average gain is 0.70 dB with a maximum average gain of 2.46 db (image 8) and a minimum one of 0.11 dB (image 23). The average gain is slightly better for the histogram shifting implementation. Thus, the average gain is 0.75 dB with a maximum average of 3.06 dB for image 8 and a minimum one of 0.11 dB for image 23. Let us next briey compare the results obtained for the optimized SGAP2 schemes with the ones of the GAP ones. For images 8, 15, 9, and 19, GAP-LM still outperforms SGAP2-LM, but only at low capacity. For the other 20 test images, SGAP2-LM outperforms GAP-LM. The difference between the PSNRs of SGAP2-LM and GAP-LM averaged over the 24 test images gives 0.67 dB. On average, GAP-LM outperforms SGAP2-LM only for image 8 (with 0.21 dB). For the remaining 23 images, SGAP2-LM gives better performances. The maximum, 1.49 dB, is obtained for image 5. For the histogram shifting implementation, the average difference is 0.46 dB and ranges from -0.88 dB (image 8) to 1.63 dB (image 5). GAP slightly outperforms SGAP2-HS at low capacity; otherwise, SGAP2-HS gives better results. With improved embedding, the SGAP2 reversible watermarking performs better than the GAP one. On average, the optimized SGAP2 schemes provide a gain of about 0.5 dB. The average gain at high capacity (towards 1 bpp) is higher than 1 dB The gain of the SGAP, SGAP2, and SGAP3 schemes with respect to the corresponding GAP schemes are presented in Table III. F. Improvement Versus Optimization The results presented above have been obtained by varying both the threshold and the parameter , i.e., for each threshold value, the PSNR is maximized in function of . If one takes the value of providing the global maximum for the entire set of thresholds, the loss is negligible. In both cases, the optimization can be speed-up by a binary search algorithm. The search interval, , can also be bounded. For instance, from our test, we have learned that, generally, the optimal value ranges between .

Fig. 6. PSNR with respect to embedding bit-rate for SGAP3-HS (solid line) and Sachnev et al. (dashed line) schemes on standard graylevel images.

dB for Jet (maximum 3.28 dB), and 0.40 dB for Mandrill with a maximum improvement of 0.66 dB. The embedding into the full context appears to provide the poorest results. We remind that, for this scheme, the context was embedded as follows: , , , and . The alternate subtraction/addition perturbs more the context pixels compared with the simple subtraction and consequently, the prediction errors increase more than for the other two schemes. Therefore, even if the results for the embedding of a single pixel are similar, the global performances are signicantly different. We further consider only SGAP2 and SGAP3. On the 24 high-quality images, the optimized SGAP2-LM gives an average improvement of 1.45 dB. The best average results are obtained for image 5 (2.44 dB) and for image 8 (2.40 dB). The minimum improvements, 0.57 and 0.76 dB, are obtained for image 23 and 9. Furthermore, the loss by optimization with constant for the entire range of capacities is less than 0.01 dB. The optimized values of range from 0.161 (image 23) to 0.286 (image 5). The average is 0.237. On the same dataset, the histogram shifting implementation gives an average improvement of 1.20 dB. The maximum improvements are obtained for the same test images (5 and 8), 2.54 and 2.19 dB, respectively. The minimum improvements are 0.38 dB (image 23) and 0.59 dB (image 15). The average loss in performance by considering the results for constant is greater than for the location map implementation, but still negligible, namely 0.047 dB. This latter result was obtained for ranging from 0.166 (image 23) to 0.327 (image 1). The average value of is 0.25. The results at 0.95 bpp are as follows: an average gain of 2.50 dB with a maximum one of 3.62 dB (image 7) for SGAP2-LM and 2.74 dB on average with a maximum of 4.89 dB (image 7) for SGAP3-LM. The optimized SGAP3-LM provides an average improvement of 1.35 dB. The maximum improvements are 2.33 dB (image 7) and 2.23 dB (image 5). The minimum improvements are 1.19 dB (image 23) and 1.20 dB (image 3). As above, the loss by taking constant for all the thresholds is negligible (less than 0.01 dB). The optimum ranges between 0.157 (image 23) and 0.247 (image 7). The average is 0.205. The average improvement obtained for the histogram shifting implementation, SGAP3-HS, is slightly lower, 0.89 dB. The minimum improvements are 0.63 dB (image 23) and 0.65 dB (imge 12). The maximum gain is 1.80 dB (image 5). The loss for optimization on constant for all thresholds is 0.024 dB.

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TABLE III GAIN OF SGAP, SGAP2, AND SGAP3 SCHEMES WITH RESPECT TO GAP SCHEMES ON THE GRAYLEVEL VERSION OF KODAK TEST IMAGES

TABLE V EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS ON LENA FOR THE ORIGINAL AND THE OPTIMIZED VERSION OF TSENG et al.

TABLE IV RESULTS ON MED AND SGAP WITH ON THE GRAYLEVEL VERSION OF KODAK TEST IMAGES

A very fast but suboptimal solution is to consider a xed implementation for an entire set of images. For instance, for the SGAP2 schemes, a good guess is . For the SGAP2-LM implementation, the average loss is 0.032 dB. The maximum loss appears for image 9, namely 0.15 dB. The gain obtained by full optimization for image 9 is of 0.77 dB, i.e., the loss corresponds to almost 20%. For the histogram shifting implementation with , the average loss is 0.08 dB. The maximum loss, 0.45 dB, appears for image 5. By optimized embedding, the gain obtained on image 5 is 2.51 dB, i.e., there is still a gain greater than 2 dB. Finally, since the optimal value of appears to range mainly in , we have taken exactly the half of the interval, i.e., . Even in this case, the improvement is important. The results for MED and SGAP are presented in Table IV. As it can be seen, the results of Table IV are close to the ones of Table II. G. Some More Results So far, we have investigated the optimization of the embedding for three predictors, namely MED, GAP, and SGAP. The optimized schemes outperform the basic ones. The most significant results have been obtained for SGAP, namely for SGAP2 and SGAP3. Let us next compare the results of SGAP3-HS scheme with the ones reported by Sachnev et al. in [23]. The scheme of Sachnev et al. is based on a completely different predictor, i.e., the average on the rhombus of the four horizontal and vertical neighbors. In order to increase the embedding capacity, two embedded stages are chained. The pixels embedded into the rst stage are used to predict the ones embedded

into the second stage. Sorting is used to select the pixels to be embedded in order to reduce the distortion. It should be noticed that the scheme of Sachnev et al. provides lower distortion than the ones of [13], [17], [24], [28], etc. The results on the classical graylevel set of SGAP3-HS and Sachnev et al. schemes are plotted in Fig. 6. At low capacity, the scheme of Sachnev et al. clearly outperforms SGAP3-HS. As the capacity increases, the difference decreases and, nally, towards 1 bpp, SGAP3-HS provides slightly better results. Without improvement, the Sachnev et al. scheme performs better on the entire capacity range. The proposed improved embedding can be applied in other prediction error expansion reversible watermarking methods. Such an example is the scheme of Tseng et al. [19], build around the Side Match Predictor: (20) where , , and are according to Fig. 1. By subtracting from the context pixels, one gets and, consequently, the amount of data to be embedded into the current pixel is reduced from to . The optimization of the square embedding error, , follows for . The minimum error is . The results on the test image Lena for the original and the optimized version of [19] are presented in Table V. The optimized version provides the same capacities, but at lower distortions. The PSNR of the watermarked image increases with the threshold from 0.28 dB to 2.09 dB. The proposed optimization does not apply to difference (or prediction error) histogram shifting schemes as [4][10], etc. In each embedding level, such schemes create space by shifting the histogram with one position. Since the split of 1 in integer parts has only the trivial solution 1 and 0s, no improvement can be obtained. The proposed improvement might be used as a preprocessing step in multilevel histogram shifting embedding. Let us suppose that stages of histogram shifting should be chained. A possibility to prevent the overow/underow is to shift rst the extremities of the histogram towards its center. This shift with position might be optimized by embedding into the pixels and their prediction context. Meantime, since this preprocessing addresses a small number of pixels, the expected gain is marginal.

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VII. CONCLUSIONS A modied data embedding for prediction error expansion reversible watermarking was proposed. Instead of entirely embedding the expanded prediction error into the current pixel, the embedding is performed both into the current pixel and the prediction context. The optimization of the embedding for three predictors, MED, GAP, and SGAP, is analyzed. Experimental results both on classical test images and on the Kodak set of 24 images are provided. Signicant improvements have been obtained for MED and for SGAP schemes. The optimized SGAP outperforms GAP schemes, i.e., higher PSNRs are obtained at the same capacity and at a lower mathematical complexity. We consider that the prediction error expansion reversible watermarking schemes based on MED or GAP proposed so far can be improved by introducing the proposed optimized embedding. A better solution of improvement could be the replacement of MED and GAP with the improved SGAP. The proposed embedding itself is of low complexity. Meantime, the optimization of the embedding ratio increases significantly the computational complexity of the watermarking. If the application at hand cannot deal with, for instance, an efcient optimization scheme, there is still the solution of a xed value of the embedding parameter in the range 1/2 to 3/4 of the optimum . For a little loss in performance, there is a great gain in computational complexity. The results obtained on SGAP optimization suggests that, instead of focusing on the costly improvement of the predictor, better performances can be obtained by investigating some linear predictors and improving the embedding. REFERENCES
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Dinu Coltuc (M97) received the Diploma of engineer in 1982 and the Ph.D. degree in electronics and telecommunications in 1997, both from the Politechnica University of Bucharest, Bucharest, Romania. He is currently a Professor in the Electrical Engineering School, Valahia University, Targoviste, Romania. He is the Head of the Electronics Department and the Director of the Research Center for Electrical Engineering, Electronics, and Information Technology of Valahia University. He served also as an invited professor in France at the University of Savoie, INP Grenoble, and Jean Monnet University. His research interests lie in the areas of image and signal processing and include watermarking, image enhancement, and fast algorithms.