JOURNAL OF COMPUTING, VOLUME 3, ISSUE 4, APRIL 2011, ISSN 2151-9617

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Watermarking Ancient Documents Based on

the Selection of the Best Base of Wavelet
Packets and a Convolutional ECC
Mohamed Neji Maatouk, Anis kricha and Najoua Essoukri Ben Amara

Abstract—A digital library of ancient documents makes the information accessible for everyone via the web and permits
conserving, preserving and enhancing the value of the cultural and scientific heritage. Nevertheless, with a digital form, these
types of documents are threatened to be hacked, modified or even diffused illegally. As a consequence, we risk losing the
intellectual property of these documents. To curb these frauds, watermarking represents a promising method to protect these
images. In this context, our work makes part of protecting essentially ancient documents. In this paper, we have proposed a
method of watermarking ancient documents, which is based on the wavelet packet transform and on a convolutional error
correcting code. The insertion is performed in the coefficients of maximum amplitude being in the best basis decomposition,
according to an entropy criterion. This method proves noticeable signature invisibility and robustness against attacks of type to
signal processing attacks (noise, filter and compression) as a first contribution to watermarking ancient documents.

Index Terms—Ancient documents, Best base of Wavelet packets, Error correcting code, Watermarking.

——————————  ——————————

1 INTRODUCTION

W atermarking documents is a technique derived

from steganography [4]. It refers to inserting an
amount of data called signature, mark or even wa-
and their resistance to attack decreases against JPEG
compression, median filtering and Gaussian noise [9, 12].
This weakness is caused by different specification of
termark in a digital content. these documents. In fact, these images often present de-
The basic criteria for this technique are the invisibility faults that can be related to ancient documents mainly
of the signature by the human eye and the robustness to due to archiving conditions like ink splash (Fig. 1.a),
various transformations such as in geometry (rotation, dampness (Fig. 1.b), folding (Fig. 1.c), ink fading (Fig.
cropping, translation and scaling), compression, noising, 1.d), back’s visibility from the front and others linked to
filtering….To insert the mark, several domains are used acquisition conditions like weak contrast and lighting
(spatial, frequency and multi-resolution), as well as data variation (Fig. 1.e) [22, 23]. These specificities make the
carrier points are determined. watermarking task difficult at two levels: the choice of
According to the literature, many researches about the insertion domain and selecting the signature carrier
standard [9, 12] and medical images have been realized points.
[5, 20], but as far as we know, there is no work that has
been realized on watermarking ancient document images,
despite their considerable importance. Within our group
and in the collaboration of the National Library of Tunis
[3], we have engaged a wide-ranging action of digitizing
ancient documents (compression, segmentation, and in-
dexation) and we have been concerned with a primary
contribution of watermarking images of ancient docu- a
a b c
(a) (b) (c)
ments in a multiresolution domain. 
As a first phase, we have tested some watermarking
algorithms on our images such as [9, 12]. According to the
experimental results, we have noticed that the classical
algorithms of watermarking have not been adapted to the
images of ancient documents. In fact, we have always
noted that our watermarked images losing their qualities  
d
(d) e
(e)

———————————————— Fig. 1. Examples of problems that are intrinsic to ancient documents:

 M.N. Maatouk is with the Faculty of Sciences in Monastir. (a) Splash due to ink acidity; (b) Splash due to dampness; (c) Folding
 A. Kricha is with the National Engineering School in Monastir.
 N.Essoukri. Ben Amara is with the National Engineering School in Sousse. problem; (d) Visible back from the front; and (e) Ink fading.

© 2011 Journal of Computing Press, NY, USA, ISSN 2151-9617

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The choice of signature carrier points is decisive for the

performance of a watermarking algorithm. For the case of Originalimage
Watermarked
the wavelet transform, these points are chose in sub- image
bands of high frequency. For watermarking images of Waveletpackets
ancient documents, we always confront a major problem decomposition
Stages :1+2+3
of confusing this signature carrier points with the noisy
points which are among the major problems of the images Selectingthe Signature
of ancient documents. best base extracted
In [10], we have proposed an approach based on using
Selectingthe
the Discrete Wavelet Transformation (DWT). The water- Viterbi
carrierpoints
mark is inserted into detail sub-bands at third-level de- Decoder
composition. It has been noted that this approach of- Watermark
Insertion Decision
fers an average invisibility and it is not sufficiently robust
Convolutional basedona
against the median filtering, Gaussian noise and JPEG Watermarked correlation
compression of images in ancient documents. To remedy code
image
these insufficiencies, we have proposed, as a first task, an
(a) (b)
additive approach based on the Wavelet Packet Decom-
position (WPD) [13]. In fact, the choice of this transforma-
tion is based on its advantages like the possibility of se- Fig. 2. Block diagram of the proposed watermarking approach:
lecting a best base of sub-bands which provides a location (a) Insertion phase; (b) Detection phase
in the higher frequencies much better than wavelets [14]. L of decomposition, each sub-band (the approximations
Yet, another advantage is that the concept of human visu- and details) is itself decomposed into four sub-bands (ap-
al model is also applied in this transformation in order to proximation and three details) in level L+1, which is not
increase the invisibility of the signature [9]. In fact, we can the case for DWT where the sub-band of approximation is
integrate more information without distinguishing the only decomposed in high levels.
change of the original image. However, in [13] the expe-
rimental results have shown the advantages of our ap- 2.1.2 Selecting the Best Base
proach for invisibility and robustness against attacks such To get a better decomposition base, we have to search all
as JPEG compression with 60% quality factor, median the best adapted coefficient of approximations and details
filtering and adding noise like salt and pepper, but it has to significantly represent the signal. The literature shows
not been not completely robust in the presence of a Gaus- that the choice of the selection of this base must be used
sian noise and a JPEG compression of quality factor high- according to an additive criterion [6]. A criterion C is ad-
er than 60%. To improve these results, we propose in this ditive if C(A1  A2)  C(A1)  C(A2) where A1 and A2
paper to use a convolutional code for coding the signa- are two disjoint sub-bases [25].
ture which will be integrated in the coefficients of maxi- Into the domain compression, Coifman and Wicker-
mum amplitude being in the best base decomposition, hauser [6] have used an entropic criterion. In the context
according to an entropy criterion. of the classification of EEG signals, two criteria have been
This paper is structured as follows. First, in section 2, proposed: the Euclidean distance measure as a first crite-
we present our approach: an insertion phase and a detec- rion [24] and the second is named Fisher [25]. For the
tion phase. Then, the experimental results are detailed in domain watermarking, Vehel and Manoury [14] have
section 3. Finally, section 4 provides the conclusion and proposed using the energetic criterion. For our approach,
prospects. based on our studies, we have opted for a criterion of en-
tropy type.
2 WATERMARKING SCHEMA The idea is to calculate the binary tree of WPD and to
construct a tree in which each node contains the entropic
The main goal of our work has been to develop a water- value for the corresponding packet. The obtained tree for
marking schema for protecting the ownership of images this application is called an entropic tree.
of ancient documents to the signal processing attacks. This criterion is defined by (1):
Total diagrams of our approch are presented by Fig. 2. N ,M
E    C (i, j ) log(C (i, j ))
2.1 Insertion Phase i, j (1)
In this section, we explain the main stages of our devel-
oped algorithm which allows us to obtain a good robust-
where C (i, j )  x(i, j )
2 2
x(i, j )
ness. These steps are detailed as follows:
x(i, j ) corresponds to the coefficients of the node of each
2.1.1 Image Wavelet Packet Decomposition sub-band of MxN size.
As the criterion is an additive function, we can really
The WPT provides additional information that DWT. work on the tree of WPD in a local way. When selecting
In fact, it can decompose a given signal upon a great the best base, we are just conserving the tree nodes which
number of sous-bands: redundant base. Indeed, for level have minimized the criterion as follows. Our strategy for
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selecting this base is to run through the entropic tree of a
letter decomposition level N-1 towards the 0 level, we
compare the entropy value of a father node with entropy
values of its four sons. We detail this strategy by the fol-
lowing algorithm:
If (Entropy (father) > Sum_Entropy (sons))
Keep_sons ()
Entropy (father)  Sum_Entropy (sons)
else
Select_father ()
level  level+1
with:
function Entropy: calculates the entropic value of a
node
function Sum_ Entropy: calculates the sum of entropic
values of four sons nodes
procedure Keep_sons: allows to keep the four sons
nodes
procedure Select_father: selects only the father node.
It is well known that the entropy varies proportionally
to the noise. Since we treat images of ancient documents
which are generally noisy, it will be smarter to insert the
signature into the less noisy zones. Consequently, in this
paper, we have tried to determine the sub-band of wave-
let packet carrying the signature based on the minimum
entropy criterion.
Fig. 3 shows an example of selecting a better entropic
base of an image of ancient documents (fig. 4.a) after de-
composing them into WPD at level 2. The terminal nodes
of the second tree represent the carrier nodes of the signa-
ture (fig. 3.b).
From the experimental results, we can conclude that
(a)
(b)
Fig. 3. Exemple of selecting the entropic best base of wavelet
packets: (a) entropic tree of WPD; (b) Best base of entropic tree.
the insertion in sub-bands of low entropy value does not
influence the quality of the watermarked image and of-
fers a remarkable robustness agiant attacks. The results
are illustrated in Table 1.
207
2.1.3 Selecting the Signature Carrier Points
Choosing the signature carrier points is very important
and influences intensively the degree of robustness of a
watermarking method. Literature has proved that the
choice of signature insertion coefficients depends on the
insertion domain. In the spatial domain, the Harris Cor-
ner Detector, which is based on the local auto-correlation
function of a signal that measures the local changes of the
signal with patches shifted by a small amount in different
directions [26], has been used in the majority of algo-
rithms in order to detect the carrier points [2]. In the fre-
quency domain, the signature has been integrated within
the coefficients of medium frequencies of discrete Fourier
transform [18] or discrete cosine transform [11]. These
coefficients represent the contour of an image. Also, in the
multiresolution domain based on the DWT, the signature
has been sometimes added to the sub-bands of approxi-
mation [12, 9] and most of the time the sub-bands of de-
tails [1].
As we are watermarking ancient documents which
admit essentially a text and/or a well-contrasted draw-
ing, we propose inserting the signature into the points
which represent the contours of the image in a sub-band.
Indeed, according to [19], there exists a sleek function ω in
such a way that: 
 1 ( x, y )   ( x, y ) x ,  2 ( x, y )   ( x, y ) y and

  (t )dt  0 , where  ( x, y)  2 ( x, y )
1
and have one

null moments and a compact support. Wavelet transform
of f ( x, y )  L2 ( R 2 ) at scale s can be written as a mul-
tiscale differential operator:
W21j f ( x, y)   f 21j ( x, y)  
 2    2 j ( f  w j )( x, y) (2)
W j f ( x, y)   f  2 ( x, y)  2
 2   2 j


where 2 j ( x, y )  2 j (  x,  y ), k  1, 2 and  denotes
k k
the gradient.
The modulus of this gradient vector is proportional to
the wavelet transform (3).
2 2
Mf 2 j ( x, y )  W21j f ( x, y )  W22j f ( x, y ) (3)
Then, the local maximum of the wavelet transform
Mf 2i ( x, y ) at point ( xk , yk ) can be calculated by
solving the partial differential at both x and y directions
Mf 2i ( x, y )  0 [10, 19]. These points of which the

signature will be inserted are called carrier points.
2.1.4 Coding the Signature
We have exploited an ECC used in data transmission in
our watermarking algorithm to increase the level of ro-
bustness. The usefulness of an ECC for a watermarking
algorithm is to insert data in a redundant way. In fact,
this redundancy will be exploited in detecting and cor-
recting the erroneous bits in order to reconstruct the in-
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serted data in the detection phase. Many watermarking
algorithms of standard and medical image have used dif-
ferent ECC [8, 16, 7, 20]. In general, choosing a coder for a
watermarking algorithm is based on experimental heads.
According to the main experiments conducted on the im-
ages of ancient documents, it has been shown that the
convolutional code offers the best results at the level of
invisibility and robustness in relation to attacks. In fact,
this coder has a great capacity of correcting and detecting
the erroneous bits of the inserted signature.
In this paper, a convolutional code of memory order m
is supported [17]. For this class of code, each sequence of
n bits in the encoder output depends not only on the se-
quence of k binary elements present at its input but also
on m sequences which were present previously. Such a
code is called systematic if the k bits of information
present at the input of the encoder are actually issued,
which is to be found intact in the sequence of n binary
elements in the encoder output. The yield on code is de-
fined by the ratio k/n with n>k, where C(n, k, m) is the
notation of this code.
2.1.5 Inserting the Signature
The signature insertion in each node is realized in accor-
dance with (4):
 X  *Wi * sign( Xi ) if Xi is a carrier point
Yi   i
 Xi else
with Yi : watermarked image packet coefficient
X i : original packet coefficient
W : watermark
 : signature force parameter
The parameter  is a factor of a good compromise be-
tween invisibility and better robustness. Indeed, when the
value of  is high the robustness increases and invisibili-
ty decreases. Conversely, when  is small, the robust-
ness decreases and the invisibility increases. This value
will be determined experimentally.
2.1.6 Reconstructing the Watermarked Image
After inserting the signature, the image is reconstructed
by an inverse WPT.
2.2 Detection Phase
In this phase, the three first steps of insertion scheme are
used as the starting steps to extract a signature S which
will thereafter be decoded.
Among the techniques for decoding convolutional
codes we can mention the sequential, Viterbi and syn-
drome decodings. In general, decoding in the family code
consists in searching the binary sequence that can be the
most likely received sequence in the trellis or tree coding.
The application of this decoding rule is very complicated
when there is a large number of a possible sequence. It is
due to this complexity that we have conceived of search-
ing the most likely sequence using the Viterbi decoding
algorithm [21].
After the extraction phase and the signature decoding,
208
a decision is calculated by a correlation between the orig-
inal signature and the decoded one to determine the level
of robustness. We have noticed, after different tests, that
the minimal correlation value should be higher than 0.5 to
guarantee the existence of the inserted signature. This
decision is defined by (5).
1 if correlation(S,Soriginal )>0.5
Decision=  (5)
0 if not
S : decoded signature, Soriginal : inserted signature
3 EXPERIMENTATIONS AND RESULTS
In this section, we describe the main experiments con-
ducted and the main results obtained. First, we will
present the metrics used in evaluating our approach.
Then, we will present our different results of our ap-
proach developed at the best base stability, invisibility
and robustness to attacks applied on the watermarked
ancient image. Finally, we will make a comparison of our
approach with some watermarking algorithms of stan-
dard images in order to prove the importance of our con-
tribution for watermarking ancient documents.
(4) 3.1 Metrics Evaluation
In order to evaluate the performance of our approach, we
have used metrics most known in the field watermarking:
the PSNR (Peak Signal to Noise Ratio) for the evaluation
of the insertion phase and the correlation for the evalua-
tion of the detection phase.
PSNR
The PSNR is used to evaluate the watermark invisibility
after the insertion phase. It is based on the Mean Square
Error (MSE). It is expressed in decibels and is defined by
(6).
2
X max
PSNR  10 log10 ( )
MSE
255 2 (6)
=10 log10 ( )
MSE
1
where MSE =  ( I m ,n  I m' ,n ) 2
M  N m ,n
where I(m,n) is the reference image and I'(m, n) is the
watermarked image. The two images are of size M * N.
Correlation
To evaluate the degree of resistance of a watermarking
algorithm, we must to calculate the similarity between the
original signature and the detected signature. For this, a
correlation function is used (7). The value of this function
varies between 0 and 1.
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( A mn  A)(Bmn  B)
Corr( A, B)  m n
( A mn  A)2 (Bmn  B)2
m n m n
where A and B correspond to the average values of the
coefficients of the two matrices A and B.
3.2 Experimentations
The different tests have been conducted upon gray level
noisy images of size 512x512 extracted from our test data-
base of 100 images. Fig. 4 shows four examples of images
extracted from our test base in which we are going to illu-
strate the recorded results. We have kept, as a signature, a
binary image (32x16) which contains the first letters of the
“Bibliothèque Nationale de Tunis”: BNT (Fig. 4.e) [3]. The
main experiments conducted after the implementation of
our approach are detailed in following section.
(a) (b)
(c) (d)
(e)
Fig. 4. Examples of our base images stemming from ancient
documents (the National Library of Tunis); and
(e) Watermark.
3.2.1 Choosing the parameters of the wavelet
packet transformation
To decompose the image, we have to fix the decomposi-
tion level, the wavelet familly, and its order. Thus, we
have carried out an empirical study to determine the cha-
racteristics. Amongst the wavelet family, we have made
the choice between the Daubechies, the Coiflet and the
Biorthogonales families, which are the most used ones
and have a more exact reconstruction. The choice should
respect the compromise between invisibility and robust-
ness.
This study shows that the level-3 decomposition, with
the Daubechies family of order 1, provides the best com-
promise between the robustness of the procedure of wa-
termarking and the invisibility of the signature [13].
3.2.2 Encoding / Decoding watermark
We have evaluated the performance of many correcting
codes (Hamming, BCH, Reed-solomon and convolution-
al) to determine the best code which improves the invisi-
bility and the robustness of the images stemming from
209
ancient documents. According to the experimental re-
sults, we have noticed that only the convolutional codes
(7) are efficient in detecting and correcting many erroneous
bits.
In the insertion phase, we have encoded the water-
mark with a systematic convolutional ECC C (2, 1, 4) ½
performance to add it to the points on the best basis of
wavelet packets of an image from ancient documents.
After coding, the length of the output sequence is twice
the input sequence without any significant influence on
the image size.
For decoding, we have used the Viterbi algorithm in
the detection phase in order to properly decode the ex-
tracted signature [21]. The decoder used is a Maximum
Likelihood decoding algorithm of not only hard input but
also hard output. This technique searches for the path
whose likelihood is maximal starting from the trellis of
the chosen convolutional code.
3.2.3 Best Base Stability
The primary step of our approach is the selection of the
best base of wavelet packet carrying data, which should
be robust against attacks. So, this base must necessarily be
stable after the attack of the watermarked image. We con-
sider that a base will be stable if it confirms the following
condition:
Let S  {si }, i  [1..N ] and S  {si }, i  [1..N ] ,
' ' '
S is stable if  k as sk  S and sk  S
'
with S : base of the original image of N nodes,
S’: base of the attacked watermarked image of N’
nodes.
Thus, the necessary condition to say that a S base is
stable is when it exists one of selected nodes by S which is

selected by S’ after a given attack.
Fig. 5 shows the percentage of the number of the detected
nodes for several attacks compared with the inserted
nodes. The curves of this study have shown that the per-
centage value varies between 50 and 100 for our test im-
ages. These experimental results prove that the best base
stability condition is respected for our approach against
different attacks. This stability allows us to guarantee the
best results especially for the resistance against attacks to
our approach. We will illustrate these results in the fol-
lowing section.
3.2.4 Results
The performances of a watermarking procedure are tribu-
tary to a good compromise between robustness and invi-
sibility. For this, the choice of the force value  is crucial.
Based on the characteristics of WPD and convolutional
code, we have firstly studied the invisibility of the signa-
ture in relation to the inserting force. Fig. 6 shows that the
quality of the original image is preserved by our algo-
rithm for a value of  between 0 and 80. We always have
a little degradation of the watermarked image compared
with the original one, and the value of PSNR varies from
70db to 30db.
Secondly, we have studied the robustness of the signa-
ture in relation to the inserting force. The robustness per-
formance against adding noise, JPEG compression and
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1 1
Img 1 0.8
0.8
Img 2
Img 1

detection
Img 3 0.6

detection
0.6
Img 2
Img 4
0.4 0.4 Img 3
Img 4
0.2 0.2

0 0
0 50 100 0 50 100
Force parameter Force parameter 
a b
(b)
(a)
1

0.8
Img 1

detection
0.6 Img 2
Img 3
0.4
Img 4
0.2

0
0 50 100
Force parameter 

(c)
C

Fig. 5. Percentage of the number of detected nodes for several Fig. 7. Experiment results against adding Salt and Pepper noise attack
attacks: (a) 3x3 median filter; (b) 12% Gaussian noise; (c) Salt with density of: (a) 0.002; (b) 0.005; and (c) 0.01.
and Pepper noise with density of 0.01; and (d) JPEG
compression with 20 quality factor.
1 1
80 Img 1
0.8 Img 2 0.8
Img 1
70 Img 1
Img 3 Img 2
detection

0.6

detec tion
Img 2 0.6
Img 4 Img 3
60 Img 3
PSNR

0.4 0.4 Img 4

Img 4
50 0.2 0.2

40 0 0
0 20 40 60 80 100 0 20 40 60 80 100
30 Force parameter Force parameter 
0 20 40 60 80 100
Force parameter
ab
(b) 
(a)
Fig. 6. Evolution of PSNR according to the inserting force of four
Fig. 8. Experiment results against adding Gaussian noise attached of:
images in Fig. 4.
(a) 10 varaiance; and (b) 12 variance.

filtering has been tested on several images.

In our experiment, we have added two types of noise 1

in watermarked images. The first is a Salt and Pepper 0.8

noise with density of 0.002, 0.005 and 0.01, and the second Img 1
0.6
detection

is a 10% and 12% Gaussian noise. Fig. 7 and Fig. 8 dem- Img 2
onstrate that a new scheme has great robustness to these 0.4
Img 3
Img 4
attacks.
0.2
The median filter is one of the most used steps in the
preprocessing phase of our images that have a very poor 0
0 50 100
quality. Our algorithm shows its robustness against the Force parameter
3x3 median filter for our test images for a value of


 greater or equal than 40 (Fig. 9).

As an interpretation of Fig. 10, we note that our ap-
proach is very robust facing the JPEG compression with
90% to 20% quality factor, but not so resistant face to 10%
quality factor.
According to Fig. 6, we have noted that even with a
large value of  , we always have a little degradation of
the watermarked image compared with the original one,
which means good signature invisibility. According to
Fig. 7, Fig. 8, Fig, 9 and Fig, 10, we note that a value of 
equal to 45 gives a value of PSNR of about 37dB (Fig. 11)
with a degree of correlation varying between 0.95 and 1.
Fig. 9. Experiment results against 3x3 median filter attack.
Fig. 11 proves that the signature is successfully recov-
ered from all sub-bands of the best entropic basis of
wavelet packets of our four attacked test images. Values
which are displayed below each image in this figure
indicate the value of the correlation between the signature
extracted and inserted.
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1 1 TABLE 1
0.8 Img 1 0.8
COMPARISON OF THE PROPOSED METHOD WITH OTHER METHODS
Img 2 Img 1

detection
detection

0.6 0.6 Img 2

Img 3
0.4 Img 4 0.4 Img 3
Img 4
0.2 0.2

0 0
0 50 100 0 50 100
Force parameter  Force parameter

(a)
a (b)
b
1 1

0.8 0.8
Img 1
detection
detection

0.6 Img 2 0.6

Img 1
Img 3
0.4 0.4 Img 2
Img 4
Img 3
0.2 0.2
Img 4
0 0
0 50 100 0 50 100
Force parameter  Force parameter 
(c)
c (d)
d 
Fig. 10. Experiment results against JPEG compression attack with:
(a) 90% quality factor; (b) 50% quality factor; (c) 20% quality factor;
and (d) 10% quality factor.

3.2.5 Comparison with other methods

To show the efficiency of our approach in the case of an-
cient documents images, we have compared it with other
methods proposed in [12] and [9] on the same image (Fig.
has shown a noticeable invisibility.
4.d). It can be observed that the superiority of robustness of
Moreover, the geometric attacks (cropping, rotation,
our proposed method with different types of attacks.
scale and translation) are very important for these
In other respects, we have already made another compari-
son with the method in [10] based on the DWT that we have types of documents. For this reason, other tasks are
developed as a first contribution to the watermarking of an- being carried out to test the robustness of the devel-
cient documents. The results have shown the contribution of oped approach against these attacks.
WPT versus DWT and the importance of the entropy crite- As a prospect, we also propose to develop a blind
rion for selecting the best decomposition base carrying the algorithm. In fact, the detection type of our approach,
signature. To show the importance of exploiting the convo- which refers to the original image, does not adapt well
lutional code in order to increase the rate of robustness, we to the field of watermarking images from ancient doc-
have compared our new watermarking scheme with our un- uments because the database of the National Library of
coded approach proposed in [13]. The results are figured in Tunis is very wide, which may cause a considerable
Table 1. loss of time in researching documents or a confusion of
images.

4 CONCLUSION
In this paper, we have proposed an approach for
additive watermarking of images of ancient docu-
ments stemming from the BNT. A specific signature
carrying the BNT initials has been inserted into points
of interest of a better basis for the WPD. To keep the
same quality of the original image and have a better
robustness of the chosen signature, we have deter-
mined the parameters of the transformation into wave-
let packets and exploited the convolutional ECC with
the Viterbi decoding used in coding the signature. Our
approach has proved that the watermark is still robust
under several attacks such as compression, salt and
pepper noise, Gaussian noise, and median filter, and
JOURNAL OF COMPUTING, VOLUME 3, ISSUE 4, APRIL 2011, ISSN 2151-9617
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WWW.JOURNALOFCOMPUTING.ORG 212

Fig. 11. Examples of images of watermarked ancient documents and detected signature of these attacked images with
α = 45.
JOURNAL OF COMPUTING, VOLUME 3, ISSUE 4, APRIL 2011, ISSN 2151-9617
HTTPS://SITES.GOOGLE.COM/SITE/JOURNALOFCOMPUTING/
WWW.JOURNALOFCOMPUTING.ORG
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Mohamed Neji Maatouk. is a PhD candidate student at the Depart-
ment of Department of Electrical Engineering in National engineering
School in Sfax, University of Sfax, Tunisia.He received a Computing
diploma from Faculty of Sciences in Monastir, University of Monastir,
Tunisia. He is working as assistant in the Department of Computing
in Faculty of Sciences in Monastir, University of Monastir, Tunisia.
His research interests are in the areas of image processing (water-
marking).
Anis Kricha. is a PhD candidate student at the Department of Elec-
trical Engineering in National engineering School in Tunis, University
El Manar, Tunisia. He received an Electrical Engineer diploma from
National engineering School in Tunis, University El Manar, Tunisia.
He is working as assistant in the Department of Electrical Engineer-
ing in National engineering School in Monastir, University of Monas-
tir, Tunisia. His research interests are in the areas of image
processing.
Najoua Essoukri Ben Amara. received the B.Sc., M.S., Ph.D. and
HDR degrees in Electrical Engineering, Signal Processing, System
Analysis and Pattern Recognition from the National School of Engi-
neers of Tunis, University El Manar, Tunisia, in 1985, 1986, 1999,
2004 respectively. From 1985 to 1989, she was a researcher at the
Regional Institute of Informatics Sciences and Telecommunications,
Tunis, Tunisia. In September 1989, she joined the Electrical Engi-
neering Department of the National School of Engineers of Monastir,
University of Monastir, Tunisia, as an assistant professor. She be-
comes a senior lecturer in July 2004 and a Professor in October
2009 in Electrical Engineering at the National School of Engineers of
Sousse-ENISo, University of Sousse, Tunisia. Since July 2008, she
is the Director of the ENISo. Her research interests include mainly
pattern recognition applied to Arabic documents, ancient image
processing, compression, watermarking, segmentation, biometric
and the use of stochastic models and hybrid approaches in the
above domains.