New Additive Watermark Detectors Based On A Hierarchical Spatially Adaptive Image Model

In this paper, we propose a new family of watermark detectors for additive watermarks in digital images. These detectors are based on a recently proposed hierarchical, two-level image model, which was found to be beneficial for image recovery problems. The top level of this model is defined to exploit the spatially varying local statistics of the image, while the bottom level is used to characterize the image variations along two principal directions. Based on this model, we derive a class of detectors for the additive watermark detection problem, which include a generalized likelihood ratio, Bayesian, and Rao test detectors. We also propose methods to estimate the necessary parameters for these detectors. Our numerical experiments demonstrate that these new detectors can lead to superior performance to several state-of-the-art detectors.