This paper presents a novel digital image watermarking algorithm based on the labeled bisecting clustering technique. Each cluster is labeled either '0' or '1' based on the labeling key. Each input image block is then assigned to the nearest codeword or cluster centre whose label is equal to the watermark bit. The watermark extraction can be performed blindly. The proposed method is robust to JPEG compression and some spatial-domain processing operations. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.

Self embedding watermarking is a technique used for tamper detection, localization and recovery. This letter proposes a novel self embedding scheme, in which the halftone version of the host image is exploited as a watermark, instead of a JPEG-compressed version used in most existing methods. Our scheme employs a pixel-wise permuted and embedded mechanism and thus overcomes some common drawbacks of the previous methods. Experimental results demonstrate our technique is effective and practical.