High Capacity Spread-Spectrum Watermarking for Telemedicine Applications

This paper presents a new 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, and size of watermark. Simulation results show that the proposed method achieves higher watermarking capacity.

Authors:

• Basant Kumar
• Animesh Anand
• S.P. Singh
• Anand Mohan

Keywords:

• Watermarking
• spread-spectrum
• discrete wavelettransform
• telemedicine

References:

[1] H. M. Chao, C. M. Hsu, S. G. Miaou, "A data-hiding technique with
authentication, integration, and confidentiality for electronic patient
records," IEEE Trans. Inf. Technol. Biomed., vol. 6, no. 1, pp. 46-53,
March 2002.
[2] U. Rajendra Acharya, D. Anand, P. Subbanna Bhat, U.C. Niranjan,
"Compact storage of medical images with patient information," IEEE
Trans. Inf. Technol. Biomed., vol. 5, no. 4, pp. 320-323, Dec. 2001.
[3] X. Kong, R. Feng, "Watermarking medical signals for telemedicine,"
IEEE Transaction on Information Technology in Medicine, vol. 5, no. 3,
pp. 195-201, 2001.
[4] G. Coatrieux, H. Maitre, B. Sankur, Y. Rolland, R. Collorec, "Relevance
of atermarking in medical imaging," in Proc. 3rd Conf. Information
Technology Applications in Biomedicine, ITAB-00, Arlington, USA,
pp. 250-255.
[5] K.A. Navas, S. Archana Thampy, and M. Sasikumar, " ERP hiding in
medical images for telemedicine," Proceedings of World Academy of
Science and Technology, Vol. 28, 2008.
[6] B. Planitz and A. Maeder, "Medical image watermarking: a study on
image degradation," in Proc. Australian Pattern Recognition Society
(APRS) Workshop on Digital Image Computing, WDIC 2005, Brisbane,
Australia, February, 2005.
[7] G. Coatrieux, L. Lecornu, Ch. Roux, and B. Sankur, "A review of Image
Watermarking Applications in Healthcare," IEEE Eng Med Biol. Soc,
Vol 1, pp. 4691-4, 2006.
[8] R. C Raul, F. U. Claudia, and T. B. Gershom, " Data hiding scheme for
medical images," in Proceedings International Conference on
Electronics, Communications and Computers (CONIELECOMP-07),
pp.32-32, Cholula, Mexico, February, 2007.
[9] G. C. Langelaar, I. Setyawan, R. L. Lagendijk, " Watermarking digital
image and video data. A state-of-the-art overview," IEEE signal
processing Magazine , vol. 17, no. 5, pp. 20-46, Sept.2000.
[10] N. Nikolaidis and I. Pitas, "Digital image watermarking: an overview,"
in Proc. Int. Conf. Multimedia Comput. and Syst., ICMCS99, vol. 1, pp.
1-6, Florence, Italy, June 7-11, 1999
[11] I. J. Cox, Matt L. Miller, " The first 50 years of electronic watermarking
," EURASIP Journal on Applied Signal Processing , Vol.2002, no.2, pp.
126-132 , 2002.
[12] Meerwald P, Uhl A (2001) A survey of wavelet-domain watermarking
algorithms. Proceedings of the SPIE security and watermarking of
multimedia contents, vol 4314. San Jose, pp 505-516
[13] S. Hajjara, M. Abdallah, and A. Hudaib, " Digital Image Watermarking
using Localized Biorthogonal Wavelets," European Journal of Scientific
Research, Vol. 26, No. 4, pp. 594-608, 2009.
[14] A. H. Paquet, R. K. Ward, "Wavelet-based digital watermarking for
authentication," Proceedings of the IEEE Canadian conference on
electrical and computer engineering, vol. 2, pp. 879-884, Winnipeg,
Canada, 2002.
[15] A. Giakoumaki, S. Pavlopoulos, D. Koutsouris, "Secure and efficient
health data management through multiple watermarking on medical
images," Medical Biological Engineering & Computing, Vol. 44, pp.
619-631, 2006.
[16] A. Giakoumaki, S. Pavlopoulos, D. Koutsouris, "Multiple image
watermarking applied to health information management," IEEE
Transactions on Information Technology in Biomedicine, Vol. pp. 722-
732, 2006.
[17] A. Giakoumaki, S. Pavlopoulos, D. Koutsouris, " A medical image
watermarking scheme based on wavelet transform," Proceedings 25th
Annual International Conference of IEEE-EMBS, Cancun, Mexico, pp.
856-859, 2003.
[18] S. Dandapat, J. Xu, O. Chutatape, S. M. Krishnan, "Wavelet transform
domain data embedding in a medical image," Proceedings 26th Annual
International Conference of IEEE-EMBS, San Francisco, CA,USA, pp.
1541-1544, Sept., 2004.
[19] J. B. Feng, I. C. Lin, C. S. Tsai, and Y. P. Chu, " Reversible
watermarking: current and key issues," International Journal of Network
Security, vol. 2, no. 3, pp. 161-170, May 2006.
[20] S. Lee, C. D. Chang, and T. Kalker, "Reversible image watermarking
based on integer-to-integer wavelet transform," IEEE Transaction on
Information Forensics and Security, vol. 2, no. 3, pp.-321-330, Sept.
2007.
[21] M. Terry, "Medical identity theft and telemedicine security,"
Telemedicine and e-Health, vol. 15, no. 10, pp. 1-5, December 2009.
[22] I. J. Cox, J. Kilian, F. Thomson Leighton, Talal Shamoon, "Secure
spread spectrum watermarking for multimedia," IEEE Transactions on
Image Processing, Vol. 6, no. 12 , 1997.
[23] H. S. Malvar and D. A. F. Florencio, "Improved Spread Spectrum: A
New Modilation Technique for Robust Watermarking," IEEE
Transactions on Signal Processing, vol. 51, no. 4, 2003.
[24] L. Perez-Freire and F. Perez-Gonzalez, "Spread-Spectrum Watermarking
Security," IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security,
Vol. 4, no. 1, 2009.
[25] G. Xuan, C. Yang, Y. Zheng, Y. Q. Shi and Z. Ni, "Reversible data
hiding based on wavelet spread spectrum," IEEE International workshop
on multimedia signal processing (MMSP2004), Siena, Italy, 2004.
[26] D. Kahn, "Cryptology and the origins of spread spectrum," IEEE
Spectrum, vol. 21, pp. 70-80, Sept. 1984.
[27] M. Unser, A. Aldroubi, "A review of wavelets in bio-medical
applications," Proceedings IEEE, Vol. 84, pp. 626-638, 1996.
[28] F. Ergun, J. Kilian, and R. Kumar, " A note on the limits of collusionresistant
watermarks," EUROCRYPT99, LNCS, vol. 1592, pp. 140-149,
1999.
[29] MedPixTM Medical Image Database available at
http://rad.usuhs.mil/medpix/medpix.html