Dual Watermarking of CT Scan Medical Images for Content Authentication and Copyright Protection

Abstract

AbstractDigital CT Scan images are exchanged among the medical practitioners for consultative purposes or discussing diagnostic and therapeutic measures. This exchange of medical images imposes two main constraints for medical information: (i) the Content Authentication and (ii) Copyright protection. To address these two issues, we have proposed a technique of watermarking for medical images which embeds two watermarks in the CT scan image. The binary pattern is embedded in region of interest (ROI) for content authentication and the composite watermark is embedded in the region of non interest (RONI) for copyright protection. Initially CT Scan image is divided in ROI and RONI by segmentation process. The segmented ROI contains some holes which are first filled. The image morphology is then used and closing operation is applied on the resultant image which eliminates small holes and fills gaps in the contour. Thus binary mask is obtained which is used to separate ROI from RONI. Before embedding the binary pattern in ROI for data authentication purpose, the Least Significant Bit (LSB) information of ROI is extracted first and is saved in separate store. Also, before embedding the composite watermark, pixels in RONI are scrambled for providing the further security. The payload in both ROI and RONI is embedded with simple LSB substitution technique. The extraction procedure is the reverse of embedding process. However few steps of extraction procedure are same as embedding procedure. We have used CT scan image database obtained from Radiology Department, Ackron University Ohio USA. The experimental results show that the proposed algorithm provides better security of medical information during transmission by addressing both issues of data authentication and copyright protection.KeywordsMedical image watermarkingLeast significant bit techniqueImage morphologyImage segmentationData authenticationCopyright protectionRegion of interest (ROI)Region of non interest (RONI)