A novel quantum image watermarking scheme for tamper localization and self-recovery

• Published in: Quantum information processing 2022-08, Vol.21 (8), Article 277
• Main Authors: Wang, Meng-Xi, Yang, Hong-Mei, Jiang, Dong-Huan, Yan, Bin, Pan, Jeng-Shyang, Wang, Tong
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Data Structures and Information Theory; Mathematical Physics; Physics; Physics and Astronomy; Quantum Computing; Quantum Information Technology; Quantum Physics; Spintronics
• ISSN: 1573-1332; 1573-1332
• DOI: 10.1007/s11128-022-03619-1

Image self-recovery watermarking is to embed the main content of an image into the image itself, which provides the image with the ability to recover tampered information. In this paper, image self-recovery watermarking is introduced into quantum watermarking, and a novel tamper localization and self-recovery watermarking scheme for quantum images is proposed. The presented scheme takes 2 × 2 sized non-overlapping image block as the basic unit for watermarking generation and embedding, tampering detection, and image recovery. The watermark qubits embedded into the carrier image include authentication qubits for tamper detection and recovery qubits for image recovery. Meanwhile, a two-level tamper detection and localization method is designed, which increases tamper detection accuracy. Based on the result of tamper detection, two separate image recovery models are devised to enhance the quality of recovered images. Dedicated quantum circuits for implementing the proposed quantum watermarking algorithm are given in this paper. The experimental results indicate that the novel scheme is effective and exhibits good image tamper detection and self-recovery performance against multiple malicious attacks.