Dynamic watermarking scheme for quantum images based on Hadamard transform

• Published in: Multimedia systems Vol. 20; no. 4; pp. 379 - 388
• Main Authors: Song, Xianhua, Wang, Shen, A. Abd El-Latif, Ahmed, Niu, Xiamu
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Berlin/Heidelberg Springer Berlin Heidelberg 2014; Springer
• Subjects: Applied sciences; Classical and quantum physics: mechanics and fields; Computer Communication Networks; Computer Graphics; Computer Science; Cryptography; Cryptology; Data Storage Representation; Detection, estimation, filtering, equalization, prediction; Exact sciences and technology; Information, signal and communications theory; Operating Systems; Physics; Quantum computation; Quantum information; Regular Paper; Signal and communications theory; Signal, noise; Telecommunications and information theory; Quantum computation; Quantum image; Hadamard transform; Watermarking; Image quality; Useful information; Information protection; Hadamard transformation; Computational complexity; Implementation; Digital watermarking
• ISSN: 0942-4962; 1432-1882
• DOI: 10.1007/s00530-014-0355-3

In this paper, a novel watermarking scheme for quantum images based on Hadamard transform is proposed. In the new scheme, a unitary transform controlled by a classical binary key is implemented on quantum image. Then, we utilize a dynamic vector, instead of a fixed parameter as in other previous schemes, to control the embedding process. The dynamic embedding vector is decided by both the carrier quantum image and the watermark image, which is only known by the authorized owner. The proposed scheme is analyzed from visual quality, computational complexity, and payload capacity. Analysis and results show that the proposed scheme has better visual quality under a higher embedding capacity and lower complexity compared with other schemes proposed recently.