A Quantum Image Watermarking Scheme Based on Two-Bit Superposition

Quantum watermarking technology protects copyright by embedding an invisible quantum signal in quantum multimedia data. This paper proposes a two-bit superposition method which embeds a watermark image (or secret information) into a carrier image. Firstly, the bit-plane is used to encrypt the watermark image. At the same time, the quantum expansion method is used to extend the watermark image to the same size with the carrier image, and then the image is encrypted through the Fibonacci scramble method again. Secondly, the first proposed method is the two bits of the watermark image which is embedded into the carrier image in accordance with the order of the high and lowest qubit, and the second proposed method which is the high bit of the watermark image is embedded to the lowest bit. Then the lowest bit of the watermark image is embedded in carrier image. Third, the watermark image is extracted through 1-CNOT and swap gates, and the watermark image is restored by inverse Fibonacci scramble, inverse expansion method and inverse bit-plane scramble method. Finally, for the validation of the proposed scheme, the signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR), the image histogram and the robustness of the two watermarking methods are analyzed.