scholarly journals Performance Evaluation of Nested Watermarked Scheme using Objective Image Quality Metrics

2021 ◽  
Vol 23 (06) ◽  
pp. 306-314
Author(s):  
Priya R Sankpal ◽  
◽  
P. A. Vijaya ◽  

In this digital era, extensive usage of the internet has resulted in images being subjected to various distortions during processing and transmitting over open networks. For watermarking applications, watermarked image quality is evaluated in comparison to the original image. In the last decade literature, many performance metrics have been used, comprising of both subjective and objective quality metrics. The subjective image quality metrics are generally time-consuming and expensive in contrast to objective image quality metrics. This paper attempted an investigation for measuring the performance of nested watermarking schemes and objective image quality metrics which included Peak Signal to Noise Ratio (PNSR), Mean Square Error (MSE), Correlation Coefficient (CC), Normalized Correlation Coefficient (NCC), and Structural Similarity Index (SSIM). For the proposed nested watermarking method, these objective image quality metrics were evaluated using a combination of Discrete Wavelet Transforms (DWT) and Singular values (SVD) in the four frequency bands. Performance of objective metrics can be judged based on their sensitiveness to watermarking artifacts. It is clear from the results obtained, for most watermarking applications SSIM provides better insight into the performance of the algorithm used whereas PNSR fails for certain watermark artifacts. The findings drawn in this paper are based on the experimentation of a nested watermarking algorithm using a DICOM image database.

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (5) ◽  
pp. 2047
Author(s):  
Nor Azura Muhammad ◽  
Zunaide Kayun ◽  
Hasyma Abu Hassan ◽  
Jeannie Hsiu Ding Wong ◽  
Kwan Hoong Ng ◽  
...  

The aim of this study is to investigate the impact of CT acquisition parameter setting on organ dose and its influence on image quality metrics in pediatric phantom during CT examination. The study was performed on 64-slice multidetector CT scanner (MDCT) Siemens Definition AS (Siemens Sector Healthcare, Forchheim, Germany) using various CT CAP protocols (P1–P9). Tube potential for P1, P2, and P3 protocols were fixed at 100 kVp while P4, P5, and P6 were fixed at 80 kVp with used of various reference noise values. P7, P8, and P9 were the modification of P1 with changes on slice collimation, pitch factor, and tube current modulation (TCM), respectively. TLD-100 chips were inserted into the phantom slab number 7, 9, 10, 12, 13, and 14 to represent thyroid, lung, liver, stomach, gonads, and skin, respectively. The image quality metrics, signal to noise ratio (SNR) and contrast to noise ratio (CNR) values were obtained from the CT console. As a result, this study indicates a potential reduction in the absorbed dose up to 20% to 50% along with reducing tube voltage, tube current, and increasing the slice collimation. There is no significant difference (p > 0.05) observed between the protocols and image metrics.


2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
A. K. Singh ◽  
S. Thakur ◽  
Alireza Jolfaei ◽  
Gautam Srivastava ◽  
MD. Elhoseny ◽  
...  

Recently, due to the increase in popularity of the Internet, the problem of digital data security over the Internet is increasing at a phenomenal rate. Watermarking is used for various notable applications to secure digital data from unauthorized individuals. To achieve this, in this article, we propose a joint encryption then-compression based watermarking technique for digital document security. This technique offers a tool for confidentiality, copyright protection, and strong compression performance of the system. The proposed method involves three major steps as follows: (1) embedding of multiple watermarks through non-sub-sampled contourlet transform, redundant discrete wavelet transform, and singular value decomposition; (2) encryption and compression via SHA-256 and Lempel Ziv Welch (LZW), respectively; and (3) extraction/recovery of multiple watermarks from the possibly distorted cover image. The performance estimations are carried out on various images at different attacks, and the efficiency of the system is determined in terms of peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) and normalized correlation (NC), structural similarity index measure (SSIM), number of changing pixel rate (NPCR), unified averaged changed intensity (UACI), and compression ratio (CR). Furthermore, the comparative analysis of the proposed system with similar schemes indicates its superiority to them.


1997 ◽  
Vol 36 (26) ◽  
pp. 6583 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert T. Brigantic ◽  
Michael C. Roggemann ◽  
Kenneth W. Bauer ◽  
Byron M. Welsh

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne Poulsen ◽  
Diane Jang ◽  
Mahmood Khan ◽  
Zaina Nabil Al-Mohtaseb ◽  
Michael Chen ◽  
...  

Purpose: To investigate the repeatability of a combined Dual-Scheimpflug placido disc corneal topographer (Zeimer Galilei G4) with respect to keratometric indices used to monitor progression of keratoconus (KCN). Methods: Patients with KCN were prospectively enrolled. For each eye lacking history of corneal surgery, 5 measurements were taken in succession. Eyes in which 3 or more measurements could be obtained (defined by the device's 4 image quality metrics) were included in the analysis. The repeatability limits (RL) and interclass correlation coefficients (ICC) were calculated for various parameters. Results: 32 eyes from 25 patients met all image quality metrics, and 54 eyes from 38 patients met at least 3/4 criteria (all except the placido image quality metric). RLs for key parameters when 4/4 or 3/4 image quality metrics were met included: 0.37 and 0.77 diopters (D) for steep simulated keratometry, 0.79 and 1.65 D for maximum keratometry, 13.80 and 13.88 degrees for astigmatism axis, 0.64 and 0.56 um for vertical coma magnitude, and 3.76 and 3.84 um for thinnest pachymetry, respectively. The ICCs for all parameters were excellent [above 0.87 except for spherical aberration (0.77)]. Conclusions: The dual-Scheimpflug placido disc corneal topographer is highly repeatable in quantifying parameters used in monitoring KCN. Excellent placido images are difficult to capture in eyes with KCN, but when available, increase the reliability of the measurements. The RLs may be especially helpful in detecting progression in mild KCN when interventions such as corneal cross-linking or intrastromal corneal ring segments are most beneficial.


Sensors ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (16) ◽  
pp. 5540
Author(s):  
Nayeem Hasan ◽  
Md Saiful Islam ◽  
Wenyu Chen ◽  
Muhammad Ashad Kabir ◽  
Saad Al-Ahmadi

This paper proposes an encryption-based image watermarking scheme using a combination of second-level discrete wavelet transform (2DWT) and discrete cosine transform (DCT) with an auto extraction feature. The 2DWT has been selected based on the analysis of the trade-off between imperceptibility of the watermark and embedding capacity at various levels of decomposition. DCT operation is applied to the selected area to gather the image coefficients into a single vector using a zig-zig operation. We have utilized the same random bit sequence as the watermark and seed for the embedding zone coefficient. The quality of the reconstructed image was measured according to bit correction rate, peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR), and similarity index. Experimental results demonstrated that the proposed scheme is highly robust under different types of image-processing attacks. Several image attacks, e.g., JPEG compression, filtering, noise addition, cropping, sharpening, and bit-plane removal, were examined on watermarked images, and the results of our proposed method outstripped existing methods, especially in terms of the bit correction ratio (100%), which is a measure of bit restoration. The results were also highly satisfactory in terms of the quality of the reconstructed image, which demonstrated high imperceptibility in terms of peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR ≥ 40 dB) and structural similarity (SSIM ≥ 0.9) under different image attacks.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katy Vecchiato ◽  
Alexia Egloff ◽  
Olivia Carney ◽  
Ata Siddiqui ◽  
Emer Hughes ◽  
...  

Background and Purpose: Head motion causes image degradation in brain MRI examinations, negatively impacting image quality, especially in pediatric populations. Here, we used a retrospective motion correction technique in children and assessed image quality improvement for 3D MRI acquisitions. Material and Methods: We prospectively acquired brain MRI at 3T using 3D sequences, T1-weighted MPRAGE, T2-weighted Turbo Spin Echo and FLAIR, in 32 unsedated children, including 7 with epilepsy (age range 2-18 years). We implemented a novel motion correction technique: Distributed and Incoherent Sample Orders for Reconstruction Deblurring using Encoding Redundancy (DISORDER). For each subject and modality, we obtained 3 reconstructions: as acquired (Aq), after DISORDER motion correction (Di), and Di with additional outlier rejection (DiOut). We analyzed 288 images quantitatively, measuring 2 objective no-reference image quality metrics: Gradient Entropy (GE) and MPRAGE White Matter Homogeneity (WM-H). As a qualitative metric, we presented blinded and randomized images to 2 expert neuroradiologists who scored them for clinical readability. Results: Both image quality metrics improved after motion correction for all modalities and improvement correlated with the amount of intrascan motion. Neuroradiologists also considered the motion corrected images as of higher quality (Wilcoxon z=-3.164 MPRAGE, z=-2.066 TSE, z=-2.645 FLAIR, for all p<0.05). Conclusions: Retrospective image motion correction with DISORDER increased image quality both from an objective and qualitative perspective. In 75% of sessions, at least one sequence was improved by this approach, indicating the benefit of this technique in un-sedated children for both clinical and research environments.


Author(s):  
Gareth D Hastings ◽  
Raymond A Applegate ◽  
Alexander W Schill ◽  
Chuan Hu ◽  
Daniel R Coates ◽  
...  

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