Digital watermarking using Bidimensional Empirical Mode Decomposition

We present a novel technique for the digital watermarking of still images based on BEMD (Bidimensional Empirical Mode Decomposition) where an additive watermarking scheme is applied to each BIMF (Bidimensional Intrinsic Mode Function) obtained by the BEMD using the matrix of maxima of each BIMF and the special constraints for building the watermarking scheme in order to ensure the invisibility, the facility of detection of the mark and the robustness against different kinds of attacks. The use of the BEMD in watermarking is motivated by the fact that it has better quality than another transform domain watermarking method in extracting intrinsic components because of its fully data driven property, and this decomposition is also proven as a very powerful tool for multi-scale analysis of non-stationary and non-linear signals and also by the characteristics of the BIMF. Simulation results show the superior performance of the technique and demonstrate its potential for the robust watermarking of photographic imagery.