APSIPA Transactions on Signal and Information Processing > Vol 14 > Issue 1

Estimation of Geometric Transformation Matrices Using Grid-shaped Pilot Signals

Rinka Kawano, Yamaguchi University, Japan, Masaki Kawamura, Yamaguchi University, Japan, kawamura@sci.yamaguchi-u.ac.jp
 
Suggested Citation
Rinka Kawano and Masaki Kawamura (2025), "Estimation of Geometric Transformation Matrices Using Grid-shaped Pilot Signals", APSIPA Transactions on Signal and Information Processing: Vol. 14: No. 1, e24. http://dx.doi.org/10.1561/116.20250067

Publication Date: 01 Sep 2025
© 2025 R. Kawano and M. Kawamura
 
Subjects
Detection and estimation,  Image and video processing,  Information extraction,  Forensics,  Web security and privacy,  Computational geometry,  Content management
 

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This is published under the terms of CC BY-NC.

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In this article:
Introduction 
Proposed Method 
Evaluation of the Proposed Method 
Evaluation of the Watermarking Method with Attack Estimation 
Conclusion 
References 

Abstract

Digital watermarking techniques are essential to prevent unauthorized use of images. Since pirated images are often geometrically distorted by operations such as scaling and cropping, accurate synchronization - detecting the embedding position of the watermark - is critical for proper extraction. In particular, cropping changes the origin of the image, making synchronization difficult. However, few existing methods are robust against cropping. To address this issue, we propose a watermarking method that estimates geometric transformations applied to a stego image using a pilot signal, allowing synchronization even after cropping. A grid-shaped pilot signal with distinct horizontal and vertical values is embedded in the image. When the image is transformed, the grid is also distorted. By analyzing this distortion, the transformation matrix can be estimated. Applying the Radon transform to the distorted image allows estimation of the grid angles and intervals. In addition, since the horizontal and vertical grid lines are encoded differently, the grid orientation can be determined, which reduces ambiguity. To validate our method, we performed simulations with anisotropic scaling, rotation, shearing, and cropping. The results show that the proposed method accurately estimates transformation matrices with low error under both single and composite attacks.

DOI:10.1561/116.20250067