Digital watermarking techniques, challenges, and applications: A review
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With the rapid advancement of technology, the transmission of digital media over the internet has become easier and more efficient, leading to its widespread use across various fields. However, this progress has also been accompanied by increased risks of breaches, theft, and unethical digital media manipulation. Therefore, watermarking is considered one of the most essential techniques for protecting, verifying, and authenticating digital media by embedding imperceptible information within it. This paper presents a comprehensive literature review that differs from previous studies in its thorough analysis of both traditional and deep learning-based watermarking developed over the last nine years, as well as its adoption of hybrid approaches for adaptive watermarking, accompanied by various image and video datasets. This versatility makes it valuable for numerous applications, including the military, healthcare, and entertainment fields. The results highlight the necessity of adopting adaptive techniques to address the growing digital challenges. Future directions can concentrate on integrating deep learning with dynamic watermarking models to harness the effectiveness and efficiency of watermarking.
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