Wavelet based imperceptible medical image watermarking using spread-spectrum
09 Jul 2015-pp 1-5
TL;DR: A spread-spectrum watermarking algorithm for embedding text watermark in to digital images in discrete wavelet transform (DWT) domain and it is observed that the use of BCH code improves the performance by reducing bit error rate (BER) performance.
Abstract: This paper presents a spread-spectrum watermarking algorithm for embedding text watermark in to digital images in discrete wavelet transform (DWT) domain. The algorithm is applied for embedding text file represented in binary arrays using ASCII code into host digital radiological image for potential telemedicine applications. In order to enhance the robustness of text watermarks like patient identity code, BCH (Bose, Ray-Chaudhuri, Hocquenghem) error correcting code (ECC) is applied to the ASCII representation of the text watermark before embedding. Performance of the algorithm is analysed by varying the gain factor, subband decomposition levels, and length of watermark. Robustness of the scheme is tested against various attacks like compression, filtering, noise, sharpening, scaling and histogram equalization. Simulation results show that the proposed method achieves imperceptible watermarking for string watermarks. It is also observed that the use of BCH code improves the performance by reducing bit error rate (BER) performance.
Citations
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TL;DR: The experimental results demonstrate that this algorithm provides better robustness without affecting the quality of watermarked image, and combines the advantages and removes the disadvantages of the two transform techniques.
Abstract: In this paper, the effects of different error correction codes on the robustness and imperceptibility of discrete wavelet transform and singular value decomposition based dual watermarking scheme is investigated. Text and image watermarks are embedded into cover radiological image for their potential application in secure and compact medical data transmission. Four different error correcting codes such as Hamming, the Bose, Ray-Chaudhuri, Hocquenghem (BCH), the Reed---Solomon and hybrid error correcting (BCH and repetition code) codes are considered for encoding of text watermark in order to achieve additional robustness for sensitive text data such as patient identification code. Performance of the proposed algorithm is evaluated against number of signal processing attacks by varying the strength of watermarking and covers image modalities. The experimental results demonstrate that this algorithm provides better robustness without affecting the quality of watermarked image.This algorithm combines the advantages and removes the disadvantages of the two transform techniques. Out of the three error correcting codes tested, it has been found that Reed---Solomon shows the best performance. Further, a hybrid model of two of the error correcting codes (BCH and repetition code) is concatenated and implemented. It is found that the hybrid code achieves better results in terms of robustness. This paper provides a detailed analysis of the obtained experimental results.
103 citations
Cites methods from "Wavelet based imperceptible medical..."
...[12] have been proposed an algorithm for text watermark representing each character in binary format using ASCII codes....
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TL;DR: The hybrid method is suitable for avoidance of the patient identity theft/alteration/modification and secure medical document dissemination over the open channel for medical applications and is robust for hidden watermark at acceptable quality of the watermarked image.
Abstract: This paper presents a robust and secure region of interest and non-region of interest based watermarking method for medical images. The proposed method applies the combination of discrete wavelet transform and discrete cosine transforms on the cover medical image for the embedding of image and electronic patient records (EPR) watermark simultaneously. The embedding of multiple watermarks at the same time provides extra level of security and important for the patient identity verification purpose. Further, security of the image and EPR watermarks is enhancing by using message-digest (MD5) hash algorithm and Rivest---Shamir---Adleman respectively before embedding into the medical cover image. In addition, Hamming error correction code is applying on the encrypted EPR watermark to enhance the robustness and reduce the possibility bit error rates which may result into wrong diagnosis in medical environments. The robustness of the method is also extensively examined for known attacks such as salt & pepper, Gaussian, speckle, JPEG compression, filtering, histogram equalization. The method is found to be robust for hidden watermark at acceptable quality of the watermarked image. Therefore, the hybrid method is suitable for avoidance of the patient identity theft/alteration/modification and secure medical document dissemination over the open channel for medical applications.
68 citations
TL;DR: This paper proposed the image watermarking algorithm in wavelet transformation (IDWT) using the singular value decomposition (SVD) and particle swarm optimization (PSO) and showed improved performance in terms of imperceptibility and robustness.
62 citations
TL;DR: The experimental results validate the effectiveness of the proposed framework in terms of BER and embedding capacity compared to other state-of-the-art methods and find potential application in prevention of patient identity theft in e-health applications.
Abstract: In this paper, an improved wavelet based medical image watermarking algorithm is proposed. Initially, the proposed technique decomposes the cover medical image into ROI and NROI regions and embedding three different watermarks into the non-region of interest (NROI) part of the transformed DWT cover image for compact and secure medical data transmission in E-health environment. In addition, the method addressing the problem of channel noise distortion may lead to faulty watermark by applying error correcting codes (ECCs) before embedding them into the cover image. Further, the bit error rates (BER) performance of the proposed method is determined for different kind of attacks including ‘Checkmark’ attacks. Experimental results indicate that the Turbo code performs better than BCH (Bose-Chaudhuri-Hochquenghem) error correction code. Furthermore, the experimental results validate the effectiveness of the proposed framework in terms of BER and embedding capacity compared to other state-of-the-art methods. Therefore, the proposed method finds potential application in prevention of patient identity theft in e-health applications.
57 citations
Cites methods from "Wavelet based imperceptible medical..."
...The method can embed only ‘381’ bits information only and offer better peak signal to noise ratio (PSNR) and BER performance than themethod proposed in [10]....
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TL;DR: A secure multilevel watermarking scheme in which the encrypted text acts as a watermark based on secure spread-spectrum technique for digital images in discrete wavelet transform (DWT) domain is presented.
Abstract: This paper presents a secure multilevel watermarking scheme in which the encrypted text acts as a watermark. The algorithm is based on secure spread-spectrum technique for digital images in discrete wavelet transform (DWT) domain. Potential application of the proposed watermarking scheme is successfully demonstrated for embedding various medical watermarks in text format at different subband decomposition levels depending upon their performance requirements. In the embedding process, the cover CT Scan image is decomposed up to third level of DWT coefficients. Different text watermarks such as personal and medical record of the patient, diagnostic/image codes and doctor code/signature are embedded into the selective coefficients of the second and third level DWT for potential telemedicine applications. Selection of DWT coefficients for embedding is done by column wise thresholding of coefficients values. Also, encryption is applied to the ASCII representation of the text and the encoded text watermark is embedded. The algorithm correctly extracts the embedded watermarks without error and is robust against numerous known attacks without much degradation of the medical image quality of the watermarked image.
55 citations
References
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07 Jun 1999
TL;DR: Data hiding techniques for copyright protection of still images are reviewed and some recent research results in this field are described.
Abstract: Usage of digital media has witnessed a tremendous growth during the last decades, as a result of their notable benefits in efficient storage, ease of manipulation and transmission. However these features make digital media vulnerable to copyright infringement, tampering and unauthorized distribution. In the last five years the protection of digital information has received significant attention within the digital media community, and a number of techniques that try to address the problem by hiding appropriate information (e.g. copyright or authentication data) within digital media have been proposed. In this paper we review data hiding techniques for copyright protection of still images and describe some recent research results in this field.
108 citations
"Wavelet based imperceptible medical..." refers background in this paper
...LSB substitution, patchwork, and spread spectrum image steganography are some of the important spatial domain information hiding techniques [5]....
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07 Aug 2002
TL;DR: A novel watermarking scheme based on the quantization of wavelet packet coefficients and uses characteristics of the human visual system to maximize the embedding weights while keeping good perceptual transparency to detect malicious tampering of images.
Abstract: We present a novel watermarking scheme to ensure the credibility of digital images. The proposed technique is able to detect malicious tampering of images even if they have been incidentally distorted by basic image processing operations. Our system is based on the quantization of wavelet packet coefficients and uses characteristics of the human visual system to maximize the embedding weights while keeping good perceptual transparency. We develop an image-dependant method to evaluate, in the discrete wavelet domain, the optimal quantization steps allowing the tamper proofing of still images. The nature of multiresolution discrete wavelet decomposition allows the spatial and frequency localization of image tampering. Experimental results are presented to demonstrate the capacity of our system to detect unauthorized modification of images while staying robust to image compression.
45 citations
TL;DR: A second-order statistics (SOS)-based image quality metric is proposed, which considers the texture masking effect and the contrast sensitivity in Karhunen-Loève transform domain and shows that the proposed watermarking scheme can take full advantage of the distortion constraint and improve the robustness in return.
Abstract: Efficient image watermarking calls for full exploitation of the perceptual distortion constraint. Second-order statistics of visual stimuli are regarded as critical features for perception. This paper proposes a second-order statistics (SOS)-based image quality metric, which considers the texture masking effect and the contrast sensitivity in Karhunen-Loeve transform domain. Compared with the state-of-the-art metrics, the quality prediction by SOS better correlates with several subjectively rated image databases, in which the images are impaired by the typical coding and watermarking artifacts. With the explicit metric definition, spread spectrum watermarking is posed as an optimization problem: we search for a watermark to minimize the distortion of the watermarked image and to maximize the correlation between the watermark pattern and the spread spectrum carrier. The simple metric guarantees the optimal watermark a closed-form solution and a fast implementation. The experiments show that the proposed watermarking scheme can take full advantage of the distortion constraint and improve the robustness in return.
35 citations
"Wavelet based imperceptible medical..." refers background in this paper
...The problem of watermark security can be solved using spread-spectrum scheme [14]-[16]....
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TL;DR: This paper presents a secure spread-spectrum watermarking algorithm for digital images in discrete wavelet transform (DWT) domain that achieves higher security and robustness against various attacks.
Abstract: This paper presents a secure spread-spectrum watermarking algorithm for digital images in discrete wavelet transform (DWT) domain. The algorithm is applied for embedding watermarks like patient identification/ source identification or doctors signature in binary image format into host digital radiological image for potential telemedicine applications. Performance of the algorithm is analysed by varying the gain factor, subband decomposition levels, size of watermark, wavelet filters and medical image modalities. Simulation results show that the proposed method achieves higher security and robustness against various attacks.
35 citations
"Wavelet based imperceptible medical..." refers background in this paper
...Basant et. al. proposed secure spread-spectrum based watermarking algorithms for embedding sensitive medical information like physician's signature / identification code or patient's identity code into radiological image for identity authentication purposes [17]-[18]....
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TL;DR: It’s worth noting that in many cases medical ID numbers are Social Security numbers, and the World Privacy Forum and Blue Cross Blue Shield Association estimate that approximately 1% of all fraud is medical identity theft.
Abstract: M edical identity theft is defined as the use of patient identification information and=or physician identification information used to bill or obtain medical services. This is differentiated from the more common form, financial identity theft, in which identifying information like Social Security Numbers and credit card numbers are fraudulently used for financial gain. According to a 2008 Federal Trade Commission (FTC) estimate, medical identity theft represents 3% of all identity theft cases, or approximately 250,000 incidents annually. Health and Human Services, however, has jurisdiction over medical identity theft, not the FTC. Furthermore, the Fair Credit Reporting Act cannot be used to remove fraudulent medical records. The World Privacy Forum (WPF) and Blue Cross Blue Shield Association estimate that approximately 1% of all fraud is medical identity theft. The WPF also provides another interesting statistic. The ‘‘street value’’ of a stolen Social Security number is $1. The ‘‘street value’’ of stolen medical identification information is $50. It’s worth noting, however, that in many cases medical ID numbers are Social Security numbers.
31 citations
"Wavelet based imperceptible medical..." refers background in this paper
...Medical identity theft has been a serious security concern in telemedicine [13]....
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