Near-lossless digital watermarking for copyright protection of remote sensing images

M. Barnia , F. Bartolinib , V. Cappellinib , E. Maglic , G. Olmoc

a b c
University of Siena University of Florence Politecnico di Torino
Department of Information Engineering Dept. of Electronics and Department of Electronics
Via Roma 56 - Siena 53100 - ITALY Telecommunications Corso Duca degli Abruzzi, 24
Ph.: +39 0577 234621 Via S.Marta 3, 50139 - Firenze - ITALY 10129 Torino - ITALY
Fax: +39 0577 233602 Ph.: +39 0577 4796385 Ph.: +39 011 5644195
E-mail: (barni)@dii.unisi.it Fax: +39 0577 494569 Fax: +39 011 5644149
E-mail: (barto,cappellini)@lci.det.unifi.it E-mail: (magli,olmo)@polito.it

Abstract— We propose near-lossless digital watermarking for
copyright protection of remote sensing images. In particular, we
show that, by forcing a maximum absolute difference between the
original and watermarked scene, the near-lossless paradigm makes
it possible to decrease the effect of watermarking on remote sens-
ing applications to be carried out on the images. As an example,
the effect of near-lossless watermarking on image classification is
analyzed.
I. I NTRODUCTION
The diffusion of digital media has enabled a whole range of new ap-
plications, leading to the development of the related signal processing
technologies. This is especially true in the multimedia context; how-
ever, applications to other fields such as remote sensing are also being
considered [1]. As a matter of fact, many providers of remote sensing
data are using the Internet as distribution means of fully digital image
products. In particular, a key issue in modern content distribution lies in
the ability of the media provider to offer flexible content fruition poli-
cies, as well as to verify that such policies are not violated. In several
fields, e.g. audio and image distribution, this has been made possible by
means of digital watermarking, which consists in permanently embed-
ding an information string into the images; this information can be used
at a later time to prove image origin and enforce ownership rights. A
preliminary study of the watermarking applicability to remote sensing
images has been presented in [1], where the watermarking requirements
for this scenario have been outlined.
It is worth noticing that the use of digital watermarking in the remote
sensing field has been so far limited. In fact, in the past the scientific
nature of remote sensing data has often been put forward as a reason
to not modify these data in any way; more recently it has been recog-
nized that, since these data are affected by inherent measurement noise,
slight modifications can be accepted provided that suitable quality re-
quirements are met. This has led to the development of the so-called
near-lossless concept, meaning that data modifications can be accepted,
provided that at every pixel they are within a maximum user-defined
distance from the original image. If this bound if sufficiently low, it is
expected that the results of applications run on near-lossless processed
images are extremely close to those related to the original unmodified
data.
In this paper we extend the near-lossless concept to the digital wa-
termarking scenario. In particular, we first rephrase the near-lossless
concept in the watermarking field. Then, we propose a modification of
two well-established techniques originally developed to protect multi-
media data. More specifically, near-lossless watermarking is achieved
by clipping the watermark signal in the spatial domain so that the max-
imum signal distortion is kept below a user-specified limit. The impact
of the clipping operation on watermark robustness is evaluated exper-
imentally, as well as the impact of watermark insertion on a classical
remote sensing application such as unsupervised classification.
II. N EAR - LOSSLESS WATERMARKING
So far, the near-lossless constraint has never been addressed by wa-
termarking literature, mainly because in a multimedia framework, such
a requirement is replaced by the invisibility constraint. As a conse-
quence, though the watermarking energy is always kept very low, most
of the algorithms proposed so far can not be considered of the near-
lossless type. A possible way to build a near-lossless watermark by
starting from an existing watermarking scheme, consists in first water-
marking the image via the conventional algorithm, and then clipping the
watermark in the spatial domain so that the maximum error between the
original and the watermarked image is kept below a user-defined level.
In the sequel we will exemplify such an approach by applying it to two
popular watermarking algorithms, one operating in the DFT domain
[3], and one using the discrete wavelet transform (DWT) [4]. It must
be emphasized that neither the DFT nor the DWT algorithm have been
specifically developed for remote sensing imagery, but rather to match
the characteristics of the human visual system in multimedia applica-
tions, thus suggesting that better results can be obtained by tailoring the
watermarking algorithm to the application at hand.
It is worth emphasizing that the near-lossless watermarking is tightly
related to quality metrics that have been developed in the remote sens-
ing field to assess the quality of collected data. Let us consider the
original (or reference) data vector [xm,n
1 xm,n
2 . . . xm,n
i . . . xm,n T
N ] and
m,n m,n m,n m,n T
the modified vector [x̂1 x̂2 . . . x̂i . . . x̂N ] , being (m, n) the
spatial coordinates of each pixel, and i its spectral coordinate. Two er-
ror metrics are very common to measure the spectral distance [5], [6],
namely the Euclidean distance
v
uN
uX m,n
m,n
DE =t (x − x̂m,n )2
i i
i=1
and the L∞ distance
m,n
DC = max |xm,n
i − x̂m,n
i |
i

Near-lossless watermarking attempts to minimize the L∞ distance be-

This work was supported by ASI (Italian Space Agency) Grant: “Watermarking techniques for authen-
tication and copyright protection of remote sensing images accessible through public and private thematic tween the original and watermarked image, thus providing the mini-
networks” mum quality degradation according to an accepted quality metric.
 TABLE I
III. E XPERIMENTAL RESULTS
ROBUSTNESS AGAINST CROPPING
The DFT- and DWT-based near-lossless algorithms have been care-
fully tested to measure the (possibly negative) impact that clipping has DFT-based algorithm
on watermark robustness and the benefits it brings in terms of unobtru- MIS Peak Percentage
siveness. More specifically, we measured watermark robustness against Case PSNR no clipping clipping error clipped
image cropping, since this turns out to be the most dangerous attack 1 55 200 200 2 0.02
in the remote sensing case. In addition, we measured the impact of 2 53 160 160 2 0.34
watermark insertion on image classification, both in the case of near- 3 51 150 150 3 5.46
lossless and conventional watermarking. We focus on image classifica- 4 49 140 200 4 42.72
tion, since this is perhaps the most common application in the field of
DWT-based algorithm
remote sensing.
MIS Peak Percentage
The results presented in the following have been obtained by com-
Case PSNR no clipping clipping error clipped
ponentwise applying the two algorithms to a 512x512 image from the
1 55 40 40 1 0
SPOT satellite. This multispectral image, acquired by the SPOT XS
2 53 40 40 1 0
instrument, has a ground resolution of 20 m; the sensor measurements
3 51 30 30 2 1.93
are in the three bands 0,5-0,59 µm, 0,61-0,68 µm, and 0,79-0,89 µm.
4 49 30 30 3 42.46
A greyscale version of the image is reported in Fig. 1.

a very minor one, thus suggesting that robustness is mainly related to

PSNR. It can also be noted that the percentage of clipped pixels raises
abruptly when PSNR is below 51dB, thus roughly setting the limits of
usability of the clipping strategy we proposed.

B. Watermarking effects on classification

To evaluate the impact of the watermark presence on classification
accuracy, we considered an unsupervised clustering algorithm based
on peak search in the multidimensional histogram [7], with a maxi-
mum number of three clusters. The results we obtained on the non-
watermarked image are shown in Fig. 2.

Fig. 1. Greyscale version of the original SPOT image

For the DFT case diagonals ranging from 40th to 239th have been
watermarked. The mark has been inserted in each band separately, with
several degrees of energy (case 1 to 4). Both the case of clipping the
watermarking signal (by imposing a peak error of 1), and of not clip-
ping (thus not granting any limit on peak error) have been tested.

A. Robustness against cropping

The results we obtained with regard to robustness against cropping
are summarized in Tab. I. The comparison between the various algo-
rithms is performed by fixing the Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratio (PSNR)
between the original and the watermark images. The values we used,
expressed in dB, are given in the second column of the table. The third
and fourth columns of Tab. I reports the minimum image size (MIS) al- Fig. 2. Unsupervised classification of the original image (3 clusters).
lowing watermark detection, for the two cases of unclipped and clipped
watermark respectively. Note that we assumed that the watermark is Clustering was then applied to the watermarked SPOT image, thus
present if it is detected in at least two bands. allowing us to measure the number of pixels whose assignation changed
The fifth column states the maximum peak error when clipping is due to watermarking. The results we obtained are reported in Tab. II for
not applied, while the sixth column reports the percentage of pixels the DFT- and DWT-based algorithms respectively. For varying values
clipping was applied to, so to grant a peak error of 1. of the watermark energy and peak error (case 1 to 4), the table reports
As can be seen, the impact of watermark clipping on robustness is the number of misclassified pixels with respect to the classification of
the original, non-marked image. Results are shown in the case of wa- those pixels which were already misclassified in the original clustering
termark clipping, and no clipping. procedure. In order to support such a claim, we compared the classifica-
As for the DFT-based algorithm, it can be seen that, on the test image, tion results yielded by the two clustering algorithms considered in this
the percentage of misclassified pixels abruptly increases with water- paper, namely the one based on peak search in the multidimensional
mark energy and peak error when the standard algorithm (i.e. without histogram [7], and ISODATA [2], on the original non-watermarked im-
clipping) is used. On the other hand, it is worth noticing that, while clip- age; we found that for about 15% of the pixels, cluster assignations
ping does not apparently impair watermark robustness, it dramatically by the two algorithms were different. The inherent uncertainty of the
limits the classification errors due to the watermark insertion. In fact, at clustering algorithm is thus similar, if not higher, than the error intro-
all watermark energy levels considered, the percentage of misclassified duced by near-lossless watermarking, thus witnessing the validity of
pixels turns out to be much lower than if the standard algorithm were our approach.
used. In order to validate the near-lossless approach, we have also applied
Similar remarks can be made with reference to the DWT-based algo- a lossy image compression algorithm, specifically designed to obtain a
rithm. In particular, in this case the classification results are better than bounded peak error between the original and compressed image, to the
those of the DFT-based algorithm. Interestingly, the classification per- three bands of the original SPOT scene. In particular, the JPEG-LS [8]
formance is characterized by a threshold effect, in that the classification ISO standard has been run in near-lossless mode with peak error of 1
results are abruptly impaired when the mark energy exceeds a certain and 2 respectively. Then, the compressed images have been classified
level. As in the previous case, clipping significantly improves the clas- using peak search in the multidimensional histogram, and the results
sification performance without degrading watermark robustness. compared with the classification of the original image. The obtained
percentages of misclassified pixels are 10% and 20% for peak error of
TABLE II 1 and 2 respectively. These values are larger than in the watermarking
E FFECT OF WATERMARKING ON UNSUPERVISED IMAGE CLASSIFICATION USING THE case at equal peak error, thus confirming the validity of the proposed
ALGORITHM BASED ON PEAK SEARCH IN THE MULTIDIMENSIONAL HISTOGRAM : clipping approach.
PERCENTAGE OF MISCLASSIFIED PIXELS WITH RESPECT TO THE NON - MARKED IMAGE
IV. C ONCLUSIONS
DFT DWT We considered watermarking of remote sensing images for copyright
Case no clipping clipping no clipping clipping protection. We proposed the new concept of near-lossless watermark-
1 10.6 10.6 6.9 6.9 ing, which replaces the conventional invisibility constraint used for the
2 31.4 10.9 8.0 8.0 protection of multimedia. We then proposed clipping as a way to mod-
3 38.4 11.3 9.3 9.5 ify existing watermarking algorithms, so as to meet the near-lossless
4 58.5 11.9 15.4 12.1 requirement, and tested this technique on a DFT and a DWT-based wa-
termarking algorithm. Experimental results proved the validity of our
approach, in that watermark clipping does not significantly affect wa-
termark robustness, while contributing to mitigate the effect of the wa-
The same procedure as before, consisting in performing the classifi- termark on a typical remote sensing application such as unsupervised
cation on the original and watermarked image bands has been repeated classification.
using the classical ISODATA classifier [2]. The related results are re-
ported in Tab. III. As can be seen, the maximum likelihood cluster- R EFERENCES
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