Non-ubiquitous Watermarking for Image Authentication by Region of Interest Masking

In this paper we propose a novel watermarking scheme for image authentication with region of interest (ROI). The watermark is embedded in a non−ubiquitous way avoiding degrading the fidelity of selected image regions, while still providing an integrity protection for the whole image including these regions. The localization resolution of tampered areas remains equal inside and outside of the watermarked regions. Experimental results demonstrate the proposed scheme can precisely localize the manipulations both inside and outside the ROI(s).