Abstract
Medical imaging and information management systems require transmission of medical images over the Internet. Many image watermarking techniques have been proposed in recent years to ensure the integrity and authenticity of medical images transferred over insecure networks. In this work, we propose a new medical image watermarking technique to detect tampered regions on medical images with finer accuracy by authenticating 4 × 4 blocks and without restricting region of interest (ROI) size. The proposed method can mark a 4 × 4 pixel block if it has even one tampered pixel, while similar methods (which have no ROI size restriction) mark 8 × 8, 16 × 16, and 40 × 40 pixel blocks. Modified difference expansion (MDE) and least significant bit (LSB) embedding techniques are used together first in the literature by the method to embed authentication bits into corresponding blocks. The method uses a small 4 × 4 window to mark the tampered region. Experimental results show that the proposed method detects tampered regions on medical images with high accuracy and can be used by all medical image modalities. The results also indicate that the method has finer accuracy and no ROI size restriction compared to similar works reported in the literature.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Tian, J., "Reversible watermarking using a difference expansion", IEEE Trans. Circuits Syst. Video Technol., vol. 13, no. 8, pp. 890-896, 2003
Alattar, A. M., "Reversible watermark using the difference expansion of a generalized integer transform", IEEE Trans. Image Process., vol. 13, no. 8, pp. 1147-1156, 2004
Woo, C-S, Du, J, Pham, B, “Multiple Watermark Method for Privacy Control and Tamper Detection in Medical Images”. In Proceedings of the APRS Workshop on Digital Image Computing Pattern Recognition and Imaging for Medical Applications. 2005
Wu, J. H. K., Chang, R.-F., Chen, C.-J., Wang, C.-L., Kuo, T.-H., Moon, W. K., & Chen, D.-R. Tamper detection and recovery for medical images using near-lossless information hiding technique. Journal of Digital Imaging, 21(1), 59–76, (2008).
Guo, X., Zhuang, T. . A region-based lossless watermarking scheme for enhancing security of medical data. Journal of Digital Imaging: The Official Journal of the Society for Computer Applications in Radiology, 22(1), 53–64, (2009).
Guo, X., Zhuang, T. . Lossless watermarking for verifying the integrity of medical images with tamper localization. Journal of Digital Imaging: The Official Journal of the Society for Computer Applications in Radiology, 22(6), 620–628, (2009)
Al-Qershi, O. M., Khoo, B. E., "ROI-based tamper detection and recovery for medical images using reversible watermarking technique," Information Theory and Information Security (ICITIS), 2010 I.E. International Conference on Beijing, 2010, pp. 151–155.
Al-Qershi, O. M., & Khoo, B. E. Authentication and data hiding using a hybrid ROI-based watermarking scheme for DICOM images. Journal of Digital Imaging, 24(1), 114–125, (2011). doi: 10.1007/s10278-009-9253-1
Al-Qershi, O. M., & Khoo, B. E., Authentication and data hiding using a reversible ROI-based watermarking scheme for DICOM images, Proceedings of International Conference on Medical Systems Engineering (ICMSE 2009) (2009), pp. 829–834
Tan, C. K., Ng, J. C., Xu, X., Poh, C. L., Guan, Y. L., & Sheah, K. . Security protection of DICOM medical images using dual-layer reversible watermarking with tamper detection capability. Journal of Digital Imaging, 24(3), 528–540, (2011).
Kulkarni, M. B., Patil, R. T., Tamper Detection & Recovery in medical image with secure data hiding using reversible watermarking, International Journal of Emerging Technology and Advanced Engineering, vol. 2, no. 3, pp. 370-373, 2012.
Sudeb Das and Malay Kumar Kundu, Effective management of medical information through ROI-lossless fragile image watermarking technique. Comput. Methods Prog. Biomed. 111, 3 , 662-675, (2013).
Liew S, Way S, Zain J, Tamper localization and lossless recovery watermarking scheme with ROI segmentation and multilevel authentication. J Digit Imaging 24:114–125, 2012
Liangyong, Huang A fragile watermark method for improving medical images security: Journal of Computers, Vol. 9, No. 9, pp 2043-2049, (2014), Academy Publisher.
R. Eswaraiah and E. Sreenivasa Reddy, “Medical image watermarking technique for accurate tamper detection in ROI and exact recovery of ROI” International Journal of Telemedicine and Applications, vol. 2014, 2014. doi:10.1155/2014/984646, Article ID 984646, 10 pages
Al-Haj A. Secured telemedicine using region-based watermarking with tamper localization. J Digit Imaging.;27(6):737–50, 2014.
Thabit R, Khoo BE. Medical image authentication using SLT and IWT schemes. Multimed Tools App., ;1–24, 2015 10.1007/s11042-015-3055-x.
R. Eswaraiah and E. Sreenivasa Reddy, "Robust medical image watermarking technique for accurate detection of tampers inside region of interest and recovering original region of interest," in IET Image Processing, , vol. 9, no. 8, pp. 615-625, 2015.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Ustubioglu, A., Ulutas, G. A New Medical Image Watermarking Technique with Finer Tamper Localization. J Digit Imaging 30, 665–680 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10278-017-9960-y
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10278-017-9960-y