WATERMARK DETECTION

Most watermarking schemes are not resistant to geometric distortions of a watermarked image, because such manipulations destroy the correlation between the original watermark and the watermark in the manipulated image. In order to restore the correlation, a suspect image (Q) is analyzed (6) for the presence of a repeated data pattern. If such a pattern is found, it is concluded that the image has been watermarked by "tiling" a small-sized watermark pattern over the extent of the image. The actual detection of whether the watermark is a given watermark W is subsequently performed by determining the periodicity of the pattern found in the suspect image, and processing (9) the suspect image so as to match the periodicity of the processed image with the given periodicity of the watermark to be detected. If the suspect image indeed includes the given watermark W, the geometric manipulation is thereby undone and a conventional watermark detector (3) will signify this accordingly. If a combination of operations can generate the same periodicity, the detection step will include the set of possible combinations.