Abstract: Multi-layer embedding for histogram shifting based reversible watermarking leads to high capacity. However, due to the high complexity of the time-consuming multi-layer embedding, the assessment whether the given secret data can be embedded into the host image and the stego-image quality could meet the requirement, was generally not obtained in advance. This paper presented a fast performance estimation scheme based only on the histogram information. The experimental results show that the proposed scheme is fast and accurate, and provides a basis for application of multi-layer reversible watermarking.

Key words: image watermarking, histogram shifting, reversible watermarking, performance estimation, data hiding

摘要： 多层直方图平移可逆水印算法可以获得较高的嵌入容量。由于多层嵌入复杂度较高，在实际实施多层嵌入前，一般不可预知算法是否满足用户要求的嵌入容量和水印图像质量。提出一种快速性能估计方法，该方法无需实际嵌入操作，仅根据直方图信息就可以准确估计多层嵌入后水印容量及相应的水印图像质量。实验结果表明：该方法速度快、估计精度高，为实际使用直方图平移可逆水印算法提供了一种快速、有效的判决依据。

关键词: 图像水印, 直方图平移, 可逆水印, 性能估计, 信息隐藏