Efficient joint encryption and data hiding algorithm for medical images security

Abstract

In this paper an efficient crypto-watermarking algorithm is proposed to secure medical images transmitted in tele-medicine applications. The proposed algorithm uses standard encryption methods and reversible watermarking techniques to provide security to the transmitted medical images as well as to control access privileges at the receiver side. The algorithm jointly embeds two watermarks in two domains using encryption and reversible watermarking to avoid any interference between the watermarks. The authenticity and integrity of medical images can be verified in the spatial domain, the encrypted domain, or in both domains. The performance of the proposed algorithm is evaluated using test medical images of different modalities. The algorithm preforms well in terms of visual quality of the watermarked images and in terms of the available embedding capacity.