Semi-fragile watermarking for image authentication, localization, and recovery using Tchebichef moments

A semi-fragile watermarking for image authentication, localization, and recovery scheme by using Tchebichef moments is proposed. We use robust invariant Tchebichef moments to generate the authentication feature, and use scaled Tchebichef moments to construct recovery information from low-frequency domain. In order to improve the quality of watermarked image and keep the robustness of watermark, we applied HVS to adjust the embedding and extraction quantization step size. The proposed method provides a complete authentication process from RST attack estimation to image recovery. The proposed method has high accuracy of authentication, can localize and recover the tampered region successfully and is robust to JPEG compression and AWGN operations.