Segmentation and Content-Based Watermarking for Color Image and Image Region Indexing and Retrieval
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Segmentation and Content-Based Watermarking for Color Image and Image Region Indexing and Retrieval Nikolaos V. Boulgouris Informatics and Telematics Institute (ITI), 1st Km Thermi-Panorama Road, Thermi-Thessaloniki, P.O. Box 361, Gr-57001, Greece Email: [email protected]
Ioannis Kompatsiaris Informatics and Telematics Institute (ITI), 1st Km Thermi-Panorama Road, Thermi-Thessaloniki, P.O. Box 361, Gr-57001, Greece Email: [email protected]
Vasileios Mezaris Information Processing Laboratory, Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki 540 06, Greece Email: [email protected]
Dimitrios Simitopoulos Informatics and Telematics Institute (ITI), 1st Km Thermi-Panorama Road, Thermi-Thessaloniki, P.O. Box 361, Gr-57001, Greece Email: [email protected]
Michael G. Strintzis Information Processing Laboratory, Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki 540 06, Greece Email: [email protected] Received 30 July 2001 and in revised form 14 January 2002 An entirely novel approach to image indexing is presented using content-based watermarking. The proposed system uses colorimage segmentation and watermarking in order to facilitate content-based indexing, retrieval and manipulation of digital images and image regions. A novel segmentation algorithm is applied on reduced images and the resulting segmentation mask is embedded in the image using watermarking techniques. In each region of the image, indexing information is additionally embedded. In this way, the proposed system is endowed with content-based access and indexing capabilities which can be easily exploited via a simple watermark detection process. Several experiments have shown the potential of this approach. Keywords and phrases: image segmentation, image analysis, watermarking, information hiding.
1.
INTRODUCTION
In recent years, the proliferation of digital media has established the need for the development of tools for the eļ¬cient access and retrieval of visual information. At the same time, watermarking has received significant attention due to its applications on the protection of intellectual property rights (IPR) [1, 2]. However, many other applications can be conceived which involve information hiding [3, 4]. In
this paper, we propose the employment of watermarking as a means to content-based indexing and retrieval of images from databases. In order to endow the proposed scheme with contentbased functionalities, information must be hidden regionwise in digital images. Thus, the success of any content-based approach depends largely on the segmentation of the image based on its content. In the present paper, a novel segmentation algorithm is used prior to information embedding.
Segmentation and Content-Based Watermarking for Color Image and Image Region Indexing and Retrieval Indexing information embedding
Original image Segmentation information embedding
Image reduction
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Marked image
Protected indexing bits
Channel coding
Feature extraction
Segmentation
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