An invisible DWT watermarking algorithm using noise removal with application to dermoscopic images

Abstract

A new approach for the digital watermarking process is proposed to be part of the pre-processing stage of a computer-aided diagnosis system. We propose to embed a denoised image acting as the watermark image in the original host image with the final goal of improving the quality of demoscopic images for further image processing operation related to CAD. The proposed algorithm uses Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT) corroborated with some basic properties of Human Visual System such as Contrast Sensitive Function (CSF) and Noise Visibility Function (NVF) with the goal of correlating the texture properties and noise. This approach hides the watermark (i.e. denoised version of the host image) in high-pass subbands that are focused on image features. The main concern is to evaluate the distortion produced to the host image by watermarking and an objective quality measure function, i.e. Weighted Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratio (WPSNR), is used to evaluate the existing differences between the original and watermarked images. The proposed approach is tested using the available skin lesion images from the digital image archive of the Department of Dermatology of the University Medical Center Groningen. The experiment results show the improved performance of the proposed scheme against a 3 × 3 median filtering attack in comparison with the a 5 × 5 median filtering attack.