The development of new quantum watermarking is in full swing, and it is crucial to test the robustness of these proposed watermarking schemes. In this paper, different quantum circuits are introduced to realize geometric transformations on quantum images, which serve as a means of simulating geometric attacks on quantum watermark images. Receivers may get distorted images, and the extracted watermark images may also be disrupted. To recover the geometric order of the quantum watermark images, a strategy is proposed to identify the trajectory of qubit alterations. Quantum circuits can be designed accordingly to restore the original order of the watermark images, which receivers could use before the extraction process to mitigate the impact of geometric attacks. Experimental simulations demonstrate how attacks affect the quantum watermark images and the extracted watermark images. Additionally, it illustrates how quantum recovery circuits step by step act on images that have been geometrically attacked. An analysis of the complexity of geometric restoration circuits reveals that quantum circuits exhibit better performance compared to classical circuits.
The development of new quantum watermarking is in full swing, and it is crucial to test the robustness of these proposed watermarking schemes. In this paper, different quantum circuits are introduced to realize geometric transformations on quantum images, which serve as a means of simulating geometric attacks on quantum watermark images. Receivers may get distorted images, and the extracted watermark images may also be disrupted. To recover the geometric order of the quantum watermark images, a strategy is proposed to identify the trajectory of qubit alterations. Quantum circuits can be designed accordingly to restore the original order of the watermark images, which receivers could use before the extraction process to mitigate the impact of geometric attacks. Experimental simulations demonstrate how attacks affect the quantum watermark images and the extracted watermark images. Additionally, it illustrates how quantum recovery circuits step by step act on images that have been geometrically attacked. An analysis of the complexity of geometric restoration circuits reveals that quantum circuits exhibit better performance compared to classical circuits.
The Flexible Representation of Quantum Images (FRQI) is widely used for encoding images into normalized quantum states for secure processing. However, it suffers from high computational and qubit complexity, limiting its scalability. In addition, quantum comparator models, often employed for qubit comparison, remain vulnerable to geometric attacks such as scaling and rotation and require a slow embedding and extraction rate. To address these challenges, this paper proposes a novel quantum watermarking technique that integrates Quantum Image Representation (QIR) with the Novel Enhanced Quantum Representation (NEQR), offering improved efficiency, robustness, and security for quantum image processing (QIP). The proposed technique initiates watermark qubit (QB) generation by integrating pixel position bits (PPB) with an arithmetic average (AA)-based logic, implemented through a quantum circuit comprising reverse parallel adder (RPA), dividing-4 (D4) models, and controlled-NOT (CNOT) gates. For watermark embedding, the proposed circuit employs RPA, quantum equal (QE) models, CNOT gates, and Pauli-X gates, embedding the watermark via a least significant bit (LSB) strategy within the NEQR-encoded image. The extraction process mirrors the embedding architecture, utilizing reverse parallel subtractor (RPS), QE models, CNOT, and Pauli-X gates to ensure accurate watermark retrieval. Experimental results demonstrate high robustness by achieving the highest peak-signal-to-noise-ratio(PSNR) values of 59.97 decibels (dB) along with a structural similarity index matrix (SSIM) of 0.9999. The proposed framework is validated using IBM Qiskit-based quantum circuit simulation on classical computing hardware and is not intended to demonstrate fault-tolerant quantum hardware execution or provable quantum computational advantage. Rather, the work focuses on simulation-level reversible quantum-circuit modelling for secure image watermarking using NEQR-based image representation and quantum-compatible reversible logic structures. Furthermore, the proposed technique is subjected to a range of image processing attacks, quantum noise and decoherence to rigorously evaluate its resilience and performance. In addition, an AI-assisted attack classification module is incorporated to automatically identify the type of distortion applied to the attacked watermarked images. A lightweight Random Forest classifier is trained to classify different attack categories, including no attack, Gaussian noise, salt-and-pepper noise, median filtering, histogram equalization, JPEG compression, cropping, rotation, and text addition. The proposed AI-assisted module achieves an overall classification accuracy of 96.56%, demonstrating its effectiveness in automatic attack identification and further strengthening the applicability of the proposed quantum watermarking framework for secure image authentication. Resource analysis shows that the watermark generation circuit requires 354 QBs (including 320 for RPA, 10 for D4, and 24 for CNOT), while both embedding and extraction consume 400 QBs each. Theoretical evaluation and empirical validation confirm the technique’s effectiveness in preserving image integrity and confidentiality, establishing it as a viable approach for secure quantum image watermarking in real time applications.
This paper proposes a novel geometrically invariant quantum watermarking scheme using Quantum Error Correction (QEC) and Novel Enhanced Quantum Image Representation (NEQR). The Geometric Transformation-based Image Assembling (GTA) mechanism is proposed to reconstruct the quantum watermark image utilizing QEC principle. The proposed GTA mechanism involves Quantum Image Rotation (QIR) and Quantum Block Rotation (QBR), thus two corresponding quantum watermarking methods, GTA_QIR and GTA_QBR, are proposed and detailed quantum circuits with complexity O(n) are designed. Then the Quantum Majority Finder (QMF) is proposed for embedding the watermark uniformly. In the experiments, we employ dataset USC-SIPI to evaluate the visual quality and robustness of the proposed scheme. Comparisons with the recent quantum watermarking methods is conducted and the results show that our methods have a superior performance. When under attack of ’Salt and Pepper’ noise addition, the proposed GTA_QIR and GTA_QBR improve the average Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratio (PSNR) by 22.57% and 23.49% at a density of 0.05, while at a density of 0.1, the average improvement is 11.13% and 12.05% respectively. Moreover, to the best of our knowledge, this is one of the first quantum watermarking scheme which demonstrates resistance to geometric attacks.
Research on quantum image watermarking protocols in terms of resistance to geometric attacks is relatively scarce. Therefore, it is crucial to delve into the study of geometric attack methods for quantum watermarking protocols.This paper investigates the robustness of quantum image watermarking protocols under geometric attacks. It explores various geometric attack techniques, including translation, flipping, shearing, and rotation.This paper does the simulation experiments for the protocol. The result shows that the protocol maintains recognizable watermark contours under translation, rotation, and flipping attacks. However, the details are distorted.In the case of shearing attacks, the watermark image becomes severely distorted. This proves that the protocol is not effective in resisting such geometric attacks, especially shearing attacks.
A scheme is proposed to watermark and recover unmarked greyscale images on quantum computers. The hitherto inaccessible data from a quantum image-watermark pair is extracted from their classical (conventional or non-quantum) versions using which two quantum sub-circuits are used to execute the two-tier transformations comprising of changes that: 1 embed a visible and translucent watermark logo in a predetermined sub-area of the quantum replica of the cover image 2 modify the remaining content of the cover image in a manner dictated by the watermark signal, so that the resulting distortions on the watermarked image are not easily discernible. Classical simulations of the image-watermark pairs and the various sub-circuits required to obtain the marked and unmarked images demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed scheme when the necessary quantum hardware are realised. The proposal advances available literature geared towards safeguarding quantum resources from unauthorised reproduction and confirmation of their proprietorship in cases of dispute thereby leading to commercial applications of quantum information.
Abstract This paper presents a spatial domain quantum watermarking scheme. For a quantum watermarking scheme, a feasible quantum circuit is a key to achieve it. This paper gives a feasible quantum circuit for the presented scheme. In order to give the quantum circuit, a new quantum multi-control rotation gate, which can be achieved with quantum basic gates, is designed. With this quantum circuit, our scheme can arbitrarily control the embedding position of watermark images on carrier images with the aid of auxiliary qubits. Besides reversely acting the given quantum circuit, the paper gives another watermark extracting algorithm based on quantum measurements. Moreover, this paper also gives a new quantum image scrambling method and its quantum circuit. Differ from other quantum watermarking schemes, all given quantum circuits can be implemented with basic quantum gates. Moreover, the scheme is a spatial domain watermarking scheme, and is not based on any transform algorithm on quantum images. Meanwhile, it can make sure the watermark be secure even though the watermark has been found. With the given quantum circuit, this paper implements simulation experiments for the presented scheme. The experimental result shows that the scheme does well in the visual quality and the embedding capacity.
This paper presents a spatial domain quantum watermarking scheme. For a quantum watermarking scheme,a feasible quantum circuit is a key to achieve it. This paper gives a feasible quantum circuit for the presented scheme. In order to give the quantum circuit, a new quantum multi-control rotation gate, which can be achieved with quantum basic gates, is designed. With this quantum circuit, our scheme can arbitrarily control the embedding position of watermark images on carrier images with the aid of auxiliary qubits. Besides reversely acting the given quantum circuit, the paper gives another watermark extracting algorithm based on quantum measurements. Moreover, this paper also gives a new quantum image scrambling method and its quantum circuit. Differ from other quantum watermarking schemes, all given quantum circuits can be implemented with basic quantum gates. Moreover, the scheme is a spatial domain watermarking scheme, and is not based on any transform algorithm on quantum images. Meanwhile, it can make sure the watermark be secure even though the watermark has been found. With the given quantum circuit, this paper implements simulation experiments for the presented scheme. The experimental result shows that the scheme does well in the visual quality and the embedding capacity.