An Enhanced Hybrid Watermarking Method and Imaging System for Securing Medical Images

Abstract

Medical image processing typically deals with the exploration of several medical image datasets for attaining an effective solution in diagnosing the affected patients. Medical image of the patients are typically stored in digital form as Electronic patient’s record (EPR), which must be dealt with utmost security and confidentiality, as the patient’s data are linked with external open platforms for future diagnosis. Medical image watermarking and encryption schemes assist in meeting the above requirements in effectively securing the patient’s image data. The ultimate objective of this research inclines towards securing medical images so as to achieve maximum effectiveness over health related areas. In this paper, an enhanced hybrid medical image watermarking and equivalent encryption strategy is typically investigated for attaining an effective solution towards medical image processing. The proposed methodology works with the integration of image watermarking algorithm together with an encryption algorithm. Image watermarking is achieved by a system based on Redundant discrete wavelet transform and Singular value decomposition. Moreover, by utilizing the property of chaotic signals for improving the integrity, a hybrid medical image watermarking technique is proposed by upgrading the Arnold cat map (ACM) with Logistic map. For image encryption, Symmetric block encryption algorithm based on Feistel structure is proposed. The efficiency of the proposed strategy is estimated in terms of Peak signal to noise ratio (PSNR), Mean square error (MSE) and Correlation coefficient (CC).