Invertible authentication watermark for JPEG images

In this paper, we present two new invertible watermarking methods for authentication of digital images in the JPEG format. While virtually all previous authentication watermarking schemes introduced some small amount of non-invertible distortion in the image, the new methods are invertible in the sense that, if the image is deemed authentic, the distortion due to authentication can be completely removed to obtain the original image data. The first technique is based on lossless compression of biased bit-streams derived from the quantized JPEG coefficients. The second technique modifies the quantization matrix to enable lossless embedding of one bit per DCT coefficient. Both techniques are fast and can be used for general distortion-free (invertible) data embedding. The new methods provide new information assurance tools for integrity protection of sensitive imagery, such as medical images or high-importance military images viewed under non-standard conditions when usual criteria for visibility do not apply.