Implementation of Genetic Algorithm for a DWT Based Image Watermarking Scheme

This paper proposes a new optimization method for digital images in the Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT) domain. Digital image watermarking has proved its efficiency in protecting illegal authentication of data. The amplification factor of the watermark is the significant parameter that helps in improving the perceptual transparency and robustness against attacks. The tradeoff between the transparency and robustness is considered as an optimization problem and is solved by applying Genetic Algorithm. The experimental results of this approach prove to be secure and robust to filtering attacks, additive noise, rotation, scaling, cropping and JPEG compression. The Peak Signal to Noise Ratio (PSNR), Mean Square Error (MSE), and computational time are evaluated for a set of images obtained from the Tampere University of Technology, Finland using the MATLAB R2008b software.