An efficient and robust watermarking approach based on single value decompression, multi-level DWT, and wavelet fusion with scrambled medical images

Abstract

This paper offers a medical image watermarking approach based on Wavelet Fusion (WF), Singular Value Decomposition (SVD), and Multi-Level Discrete Wavelet Transform (M-DWT) with scrambling techniques for securing the watermarks images. The proposed approach can be used for providing multi-level security in various applications such as military, copyright protection, and telemedicine systems. The key idea of the projected approach is to first combine two digital watermark images into a single fused watermark to increase the embedded information payload. Then, the fused watermark is scrambled using Arnold and Chaotic algorithms. Finally, the scrambled fused watermark is embedded in the cover image using the SVD and three-level DWT algorithms. The selection of the Arnold and chaotic for watermark encryption is attributed to confirm robustness which resists several types of multimedia attacks and upturn the security level. This paper also presents a comparative study of the proposed approach for different digital images to determine its robustness and stability. Several simulation results reveal that the proposed system improves the capacity and security of embedded medical watermarks without affecting the cover image quality. In conclusion, the proposed approach achieved not only precise acceptable perceptual quality with admired Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratio (PSNR) values but similarly high Correlation Coefficient (Cr) and SSIM values in the existence of severe attacks.