We propose a novel approach to detect the watermark message embedded in images under the form of a linear frequency modulated chirp. Localization of several time-frequency distributions (TFDs) is studied for different frequency modulated signals under various noise conditions. Smoothed pseudo-Wigner-Ville distribution (SPWVD) is chosen and applied to detect and recover the corrupted image watermark bits at the receiver. The synthesized watermark message is compared with the referenced one at the transmitter as a detection evaluation scheme. The correlation coefficient between the synthesized and the referenced chirps reaches 0.9 or above for a maximum bit error rate of 15% under intentional and nonintentional attacks. The method provides satisfactory result for detection of image watermark messages modulated as chirp signal and could be a potential tool in multimedia security applications.