Perception-based Reversible Watermarking for 2D-Vector Maps

This paper presents an effective and reversible watermarking approach for digital copyright protection of 2D-vector maps. To ensure that the embedded watermark is insensitive for human perception, we only select the noise non-sensitive regions for watermark embedding by estimating vertex density within each polyline. To ensure the exact recovery of original 2D-vector map after watermark extraction, we introduce a new reversible watermarking scheme based on reversible high-frequency wavelet coefficients modification. Within the former-selected non-sensitive regions, our watermarking operates on the lower-order vertex coordinate decimals with integer wavelet transform. Such operation further reduces the visual distortion caused by watermark embedding. We have validated the effectiveness of our scheme on our real-world city river/building 2D-vector maps. We give extensive experimental comparisons with state-of-the-art methods, including embedding capability, invisibility, and robustness over watermark attacking.