A Blind Robust QR Code Watermarking Approach Based on DCT

Abstract

In this paper, an approach to watermarking images by embedding quick response (QR) code in a digital image based on the discrete cosine transform (DCT) is proposed. A block structure for manipulation is formed by partitioning the host image into non-overlapping blocks of 8'8 pixels and applying DCT to each block separately. A single watermark is embedded in different location blocks by quantization index modulation (QIM) to ensure that the watermark can still survive, even if the watermarked image is cropped over a large area. By employing the error correction mechanism of QR code, the information contained within a watermarked image can potentially be decoded. Experiment results indicate that the proposed scheme can withstand a variety of image processing attacks. Compared with the other watermarking scheme, the proposed method exhibits superior robustness and imperceptibility with the same payload capacity.