Hybrid SVD-Based Image Watermarking Schemes: A Review

Watermarking is an important technique for protecting sensitive e-multimedia data and intellectual property. Watermarking techniques are used for many applications such as ownership protection, which is a popular area of research as compared to others such as authentication and local temper localization. There are many image watermarking schemes that have been recently published based on the frequency domain as it can fulfill watermarking requirements such as high robustness and imperceptibility. Singular-value decomposition (SVD) is one of them and is used in many frequency transform-based image watermarking schemes due to its stability and mathematical simplicity. However, there are many schemes that lack robustness against malicious cyberattacks, whereby the watermarks are easy to detect and destroy. Consequently, the proposed watermarking schemes became more complicated and cannot resist various geometric and non-geometric attacks. Thus, there are many existing hybrid SVD-based image watermarking schemes found be insecure. As there is also a lack of in-depth reviews in this domain, the focus of this paper is the analysis of the state-of-the-art in hybrid SVD-based image watermarking. We perform efficiency comparisons to highlight various security problems, open issues, and research gaps. Based on our findings, we additionally provide some recommendations for the development of more robust schemes in the future. This paper provides essential information for researchers and practitioners alike to advance the field of image watermarking.