Abstract
In telemedicine, the realization of reversible watermarking through information security is an emerging research field. However, adding watermarks hinders the distribution of pixels in the cover image because it creates distortions (which lead to an increase in the detection probability). In this article, we introduce a reversible watermarking method that can transmit medical images with minimal distortion and high security. The proposed method selects two adjacent gray pixels whose least significant bit (LSB) is different from the relevant message bit and then calculates the distortion degree. We use the LSB pairing method to embed the secret matrix of patient record into the cover image and exchange pixel values. Experimental results show that the designed method is robust to different attacks and has a high PSNR (peak signal-to-noise ratio) value. The MRI image quality and imperceptibility are verified by embedding a secret matrix of up to 262,688 bits to achieve an average PSNR of 51.657 dB. In addition, the proposed algorithm is tested against the latest technology on standard images, and it is found that the average PSNR of our proposed reversible watermarking technology is higher (i.e., 51.71 dB). Numerical results show that the algorithm can be extended to normal images and medical images.
Highlights
IntroductionIn the few decades, digital life is expected to change the e-health care system
Confidentiality is because the cover image will not cause a large amount of data loss by encoding the watermark
To evaluate the proposed algorithm level of performance, experimental analyses were executed on MATLAB R2016a, Windows 10 development environment, 3.5-GHz CPU with 4 GB RAM
Summary
In the few decades, digital life is expected to change the e-health care system. With the rapid development of Internet technology, high-speed digital communication increasingly requires more and more medical image transmission. Digital watermarking system has been widely used as a data authentication method for transmitting medical data [2–5]. The security feature makes the watermark information unable to be operated by unauthorized personnel. The watermarking method may cause a certain amount of permanent image distortion. These deformations can lead to erroneous diagnosis. Image distortion is considered to be an important issue in the use of digital watermarking systems to transmit medical images. In order to solve the problems related to permanent distortion, reversible technology has been applied for watermarking and zero watermarking [9,10]
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