RONI segmentation for medical image watermarking

Abstract

Region of Non-Interest (RONI) based digital watermarking has attracted much attention recently for medical image (MI) applications. The legal and ethical concern of medical professionals grow with watermark embedding as it erratically modifies the MIs. To minimize this concern, RONI segmentation is an essential process of MI watermarking that confines the embedding region. However, finding a suitable RONI segmentation technique in general for multimodality MIs has remained an open challenge. In this paper, we propose a generic model of RONI segmentation for multimodality MIs. We start with investigating the existing RONI segmentation techniques for MI watermarking. We present a comparative summary of popular RONI segmentation techniques and their classification and analysis. We then identify the MI requirements for RONI segmentation. The proposed RONI segmentation model is the first steps toward the development of a suitable RONI segmentation technique for MI watermarking schemes.