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  <front>
    <journal-meta />
    <article-meta>
      <title-group>
        <article-title>SURF based security of remote sensing images by encrypted watermark</article-title>
      </title-group>
      <contrib-group>
        <contrib contrib-type="author">
          <string-name>Uzair Aslam Bhatti</string-name>
          <xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">1</xref>
          <xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff2">2</xref>
        </contrib>
        <contrib contrib-type="author">
          <string-name>Zhaoyuan Yu</string-name>
          <xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">1</xref>
          <xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff2">2</xref>
        </contrib>
        <contrib contrib-type="author">
          <string-name>Linwang Yuan</string-name>
          <xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">1</xref>
          <xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff2">2</xref>
        </contrib>
        <contrib contrib-type="author">
          <string-name>Saqib Ali Nawaz</string-name>
          <xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff0">0</xref>
        </contrib>
        <contrib contrib-type="author">
          <string-name>Ahmad Hasnain</string-name>
          <xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff2">2</xref>
        </contrib>
        <aff id="aff0">
          <label>0</label>
          <institution>College of Information and Communication Engineering, Hainan University</institution>
          ,
          <addr-line>Haikou, China 570228</addr-line>
        </aff>
        <aff id="aff1">
          <label>1</label>
          <institution>Key Laboratory of Virtual Geographic Environment, Ministry of Education, Nanjing Normal University</institution>
          ,
          <addr-line>No. 1 Wenyuan Road, Nanjing</addr-line>
          ,
          <country country="CN">China</country>
        </aff>
        <aff id="aff2">
          <label>2</label>
          <institution>School of Geography, Nanjing Normal University</institution>
          ,
          <addr-line>Nanjing, 210023</addr-line>
          ,
          <country country="CN">China</country>
        </aff>
      </contrib-group>
      <abstract>
        <p>Aiming at the security protection of remote sensing images, a robust watermarking algorithm based on SURF (Speeded Up Robust Features) feature on selective regions is proposed. The algorithm first extracts the SURF feature points of the carrier, and then performs a 5/3 integer wavelet transform on the carrier image to filter out the low-frequency coefficients of the ROI and the intermediate frequency coefficients of the non-interest area (ROB); With sampling pyramid decomposition, the near subband after watermark decomposition is embedded in the lowfrequency subband of the region of interest, and the residual subband is embedded in the intermediate frequency coefficient of the non-interesting region. Experimental data show that the algorithm can resist conventional geometric attacks. The similarity of the watermark is high, and the NC value is kept above 0.89, which has good reversibility and robustness.</p>
      </abstract>
      <kwd-group>
        <kwd>SURF feature detection</kwd>
        <kwd>reversible watermark</kwd>
        <kwd>remote sensing image</kwd>
      </kwd-group>
    </article-meta>
  </front>
  <body>
    <sec id="sec-1">
      <title>1. Introduction</title>
      <p>Remote sensing imagery is an important carrier of geospatial information, and its military
and economic value is increasingly prominent, and it plays an important role in many fields such
as surveying and mapping, navigation, reconnaissance, and monitoring[1]. However, the digital
storage method and open network environment not only realize the rapid transmission and efficient
sharing of remote sensing images, but also bring new challenges to the security protection of image
data. In recent years, data leakage, illegal tampering, and ownership violations against remote
sensing images have been repeatedly prohibited. Digital watermarking technology is a
cuttingedge technology developed in the field of information security and an important means of remote
sensing image security protection.</p>
      <p>Although the research of remote sensing image digital watermarking technology started
relatively late, it has also achieved vigorous development due to its great practical significance.
Bhatti et al. [2] studied the evaluation criteria of digital watermarking for high resolution color
images, and pointed out that watermarking technology for ordinary images is not completely
suitable for medical images images and can be used by separating the color images in RGB color
space. Delaigle et al. [3] uses human visual characteristics and visual models to select important
wavelet coefficients to embed the watermark, but the original image is required to participate in
the detection, which is a non-blind algorithm and is not practical.</p>
      <p>Saqib et al. [4] embeds the encrypted binary image watermark into the block-scrambling
remote sensing image, which has good robustness to conventional attacks, but cannot resist
geometric attacks. Pereira et al. [5] uses the template matching method to resist geometric attacks,
but the key matrix is required to participate in the detection, which is a semi-blind algorithm. The
literature [6] embeds the watermark into the normalized remote sensing image in the Controllet
domain, but because it is embedded as a whole, the algorithm is not robust to the cutting of the
image size. In general, the current research on remote sensing image watermarking algorithms
mostly uses the first-generation watermarking method [2-7], and rarely involves the
secondgeneration watermarking technology, that is, algorithms based on image features. However, in
specific applications, remote sensing images embedded with watermarks inevitably need to be
rotated, zoomed, cropped to change the original size, and tile stitching, etc., and the angle of
rotation, zoom multiples, etc. during watermark detection The position relative to the original
image after cutting and splicing is unknown. These geometric attacks destroy the synchronization
of the watermark, resulting in detection failure. Algorithms based on image features provide a
brand-new idea for solving this problem, and the research on algorithms for ordinary images has
been relatively in-depth [8-13], which can provide methodological references for the research of
remote sensing image watermarking.</p>
      <p>Based on the existing algorithms, this paper designs a robust blind watermarking algorithm
for remote sensing images based on SURF feature points and the excellent characteristics of region
based feature selection using region of interest (ROI), which is strong against conventional attacks
and geometric attacks. The main contributions of this study are:
1) Secure watermarking algorithm for security of remote sensing images.</p>
      <p>2) Implementation of SURF using feature based region selection for watermarking.</p>
    </sec>
    <sec id="sec-2">
      <title>2.Related theories</title>
    </sec>
    <sec id="sec-3">
      <title>2.1 SURF feature detection</title>
      <p>SURF (speeded up robust features) is a fast-robust local feature detection algorithm proposed
Based on SIFT operator. In general, the standard SURF operator is several times faster than the
SIFT operator and has better robustness under multiple images [14]. This paper uses ROI selection
based on SURF features. The basic idea is as follows: first, calculate the integral image and traverse
the image once to get the sum of all pixels. Then construct the Hessian matrix [15] and perform
Gaussian filtering on the image. After filtering, the Hessian matrix expression is:
 =</p>
      <p>L
L
((x, y) , σ)
((x, y) , σ)</p>
      <p>
        L
L
((x, y) , σ)
((x, y) , σ)
(
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref1">1</xref>
        )
      </p>
      <p>If the Hessian matrix discriminator has an extreme value, the current point will be brighter or
darker than the surrounding points, and the candidate object may be divided by the extreme value.
To increase the speed, SURF uses a box filter to approximate a Gaussian filter. If the endpoint is

=

− µ ( )
µ ( )</p>
      <p>Where  represents the d (H) value of the feature point p, and µ ( ) is the average of the d
(H) values of 26 points around the point p. The matrix composed of the contribution of feature
points is the contribution matrix. Using the idea of dynamic programming to determine the largest
sub-matrix, the matrix is the part with the largest contribution of feature points, that is, ROI.
SURF feature point correction: let (X , Y ) and (X , Y ) be any two feature points in the original
image feature points, (X′ , Y′ ) and (X′ , Y′ ) are Feature points of image matching after suffering a
geometric attack.</p>
      <p>Rotation correction: If the number of matching feature points is N, then the angle between the
vectors of the matching feature points of the two images is the angle of rotation. From the vector
angle formula (3), the maximum rotation angle is removed. The obtained angle is averaged to
obtain the rotation angle β.
a physical endpoint, it is very important to calculate the Hessian discriminant for each pixel. If it
is a positive number, the pixel is a local extreme point, otherwise, it is not. The extreme point is
obtained is used as a candidate feature point. Then, the non-maximum suppression of the 3 * 3 *
3 cube neighborhood adjacent to this point [16], that is, the candidate extremum point is related to
8 extremum points of the same scale neighborhood and 18 extremum points of the adjacent scale.
In comparison, the higher the significance of the pixel and the greater the contribution to the ROI
selection. The feature point contribution is defined as
(2)
(3)
(4)
(5)
(6)</p>
      <p>Scaling correction: According to the matching feature points of the two images, the scaling
ratio of the image length and width can be estimated, and the points with larger errors can be
removed, and the scaling ratio of length and width can be obtained by averaging.</p>
      <p>Translation correction: Calculate the difference between the abscissa and ordinate of each pair
of matching feature points of the two images, remove the larger error value, and calculate the
average value to get the translation distance.</p>
      <p>=
(
)(</p>
      <p>)

1
 =</p>
      <p>≤  − 1,  ≤  − 1

=
,</p>
      <p>=
∆ = | −  |
∆ = |</p>
      <p>−  |</p>
    </sec>
    <sec id="sec-4">
      <title>2.2 Sampling pyramid decomposition</title>
      <p>The digital watermark is sampled, and the residual sub-band is calculated to generate a
sampling golden tower composed of a series of residual sub-bands and an approximate sub-band.
The image of this golden tower structure has scalable characteristics. Set the original image 
as
the bottom layer of the sampling pyramid (layer 0), down-sampling 
to obtain the first layer 
of the sampling golden tower, and then fill the 
with the interpolation method to form the same
as the original image The size of the image  ∗. Then the difference between 
and  ∗ is used to
construct the residual image  . After decomposing the sampled golden tower in one layer, an
approximate image 
and a residual image 
are generated. If the sampling gold tower
decomposition needs to be continued, a similar operation is performed on the approximate
subband image 
to generate an approximate image</p>
      <p>and a residual image  .
 ∗( ,  ) = 4
 ( ,  )</p>
      <p>(7)
 +   + 
2
2</p>
      <p>Among them:
of ROI and ROB.</p>
      <p>The image is composed of 5/3 3-level IWT to decompose the extract of wavelet coefficients
(3) Arnold scrambling of watermark and three-level sampling pyramid decomposition to
obtain 4 subband data:  ,  , 
and  , where 
is approximate subband,  , 
and 
are the
third level, second Level, and the first level residual subband.</p>
      <p>(4) The approximate</p>
      <p>sub-band watermark is decomposed into a sampling pyramid, and
then ROI is embedded in the LL sub-band using the reversible watermark histogram algorithm.
(5) The residual subbands  , 
and</p>
      <p>
        of the watermark are embedded into LH , LH and
LH of ROB through singular value decomposition. Embedding method: After each h-h block is
divided into h × h blocks, SVD decomposition is performed, A = USV , and Q = round (S (
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref1 ref1">1,1</xref>
        ) /
Q) is calculated. S (
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref1 ref1">1,1</xref>
        ) represents the first singular value after singular value decomposition of
each block, q is the embedding strength, and round is rounding.
      </p>
      <p>Embed the watermark according to equation (10).</p>
      <p>∗
,
=

0
,
is an integer
(8)</p>
      <p>When reconstructing the image sampling pyramid, from the top to the bottom of the sampling
golden tower, the following formula is used to restore layer by layer, and then the original image
is obtained.</p>
      <p>When reconstructing the image sampling pyramid from the top to the bottom of the tower,
use the following formula to copy the sampled gold layer by layer, and then save the original image.


= 
= 
+  ∗
0 ≤  ≤ 
 =</p>
    </sec>
    <sec id="sec-5">
      <title>3. Watermark embedding and extraction</title>
    </sec>
    <sec id="sec-6">
      <title>3.1 Watermark embedding</title>
      <p>The specific steps of watermark embedding are shown in Figure 1. Extract the SURF feature
points of the carrier image, as described in Section 1.1, select the image ROI according to the part
with a large contribution of feature points;
the wavelet subband data of the ROI.</p>
      <p>(9)
(10)
subband information  ,  , 
embedding method, and SVD.</p>
      <p>
        (4) Using the singular value decomposition algorithm to extract the watermark residual
of LH , LH , LH in ROB. The extraction method is similar to the
decomposition is performed on each h × h block, A = US 
and calculate d =
floor (S (
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref1 ref1">1,1</xref>
        )/q), where floor is rounded down and S (
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref1 ref1">1,1</xref>
        ) is the first singular value of each
subblock. Calculate the value of mod(d,2), and use parity discriminant (11), to extract the subband
information of each resolution watermark.
      </p>
      <p>=
1
0
(5) Perform sampling pyramid reconstruction on the watermark subband information
extracted in step (3) and step (4). Then, the inverse Arnold transformation is performed on the
reconstructed image to obtain the extracted watermark.</p>
    </sec>
    <sec id="sec-7">
      <title>4. Results analysis and discussion</title>
      <p>The experimental environment is MATLAB2018, which performs invisibility test,
multiresolution extraction test and robustness test respectively. The experimental carrier is 512 × 512
remote sensing image, and the watermark is 32 × 32 binary image. Fig. 5 shows that remote sensing
image and the method of watermark embedding.</p>
    </sec>
    <sec id="sec-8">
      <title>4.1 Conventional Attacks</title>
      <p>The carrier images of the experiment are remote sensing image. The embedding intensity of
the watermark in ROB and remote sensing image is obtained after embedding the watermark, as
shown in Figure 3, and the peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) is shown in Table 1. The Gaussian
noise 4% and JPEG 20% shows that NC is 0.93 and 1 after extraction, and the robustness is very
good.</p>
      <p>The NC PSNR under Conventional Attacks .</p>
      <sec id="sec-8-1">
        <title>Conventional attack PSNR (db) NC</title>
      </sec>
    </sec>
    <sec id="sec-9">
      <title>4.2 Geometric attack</title>
      <sec id="sec-9-1">
        <title>Gaussian noise JPEG Compression 2% 17.32</title>
        <p>0.92</p>
        <p>4%
14.65
0.93</p>
        <p>6%
13.18
0.93</p>
        <p>10% 20%
25.57 28.66
0.91 1</p>
        <p>50%
32.54
1</p>
        <p>According to the algorithm proposed in this paper, the image under attack is corrected and
then the watermark is extracted, and the image is only rotated, respectively. The rotation angle of
the test is set to 10 . −50 . The algorithm first calculates the difference of the original image,
calculates the difference histogram of the image and finds the peak value, and embeds the
watermark through the peak value.</p>
        <p>. Table 2 and Figure 6 shows that the results against different attacks: For geometric attacks
such as translation, rotation, and scaling, the NC values extracted by the algorithm in this paper
are all above 0.81, and the NC value can be 1 when the rotation angle anticlockwise is 10° and
translation down 10%. It can be seen that all attack results of NC value are good.</p>
        <p>Table2.PSNR and NC under Geometric Attacks.</p>
        <p>Geometric Attacks Attack strength PSNR（dB） NC
10⁰ 11.62 0.86
(Rcol otactkiownise) 30⁰ 10.83 1
50⁰ 10.33 0.77
10⁰ 11.51 1
Rotation 30⁰ 10.69 0.81
(Anticlockwise) 50⁰ 10.41 0.88
Scaling ˣˣ 00..68 -- 00..7851</p>
        <p>10% 10.74 0.84
Tr(aRnisglhatti)on 3200%% 91.07.822 00..8844
Tra(dnoslwatni)on 1300%% 19.18.227 10.80</p>
        <p>50% 8.67 0.74
Clipping 10% - 1
(Y direction) 30% - 0.84
(CXlipdpiriencgtion) 1300%% -- 00..9933</p>
        <p>Fig 4: Different attacks on remote sensing image</p>
      </sec>
    </sec>
    <sec id="sec-10">
      <title>5. Conclusion</title>
      <p>This paper adopts the idea of the second generation of watermarking, combining the excellent
characteristics of SURF operator and integer wavelet transform, taking into account the
characteristics of remote sensing images, and proposes a robust blind watermarking algorithm for
remote sensing images based on SURF feature regions. While maintaining the accuracy of remote
sensing image data, the algorithm can effectively resist conventional attacks such as noise, filtering,
JPEG compression, brightness adjustment, and geometric attacks such as rotation, scaling, cutting,
and stitching, without the need to correct and restore the attacked image. Watermark can be
extracted from it, which has strong practicability and efficiency, and can effectively protect the
security of remote sensing images.
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