Selection of Digital Watermarking Techniques for Medical Image Security by Using the Fuzzy Analytical Hierarchy Process

Abstract

Background: The watermarking technique is a security algorithm for medical images and the patient's information. Watermarking is used for maintaining the robustness, integrity, confidentiality, authentication, and complexity of medical images. Objective: The selection of medical image watermarking technique is multi-criteria decision-making and an automatic way of algorithm selection for security and privacy. However, it is difficult to select a better watermarking technique through traditional selection techniques. Methods: To deal with this problem, a multicriteria-based fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (FAHP) was proposed. This method is applied for algorithm selection for the security of medical images in healthcare. In this method, we first determined the list of criteria and alternatives, which directly affect the decision of the medical image security algorithm. Then, the proposed method was applied to the criteria and alternatives. Results: We provided the rank according to the obtained weights of the algorithm. Furthermore, the overall results and ranking of the algorithms were also presented in this article. Conclusion: Integrity was found to have the highest weight (0.509) compared to the other criteria. The weight of the other criteria, namely authentication, was 0.165, robustness was 0.151, confidentiality was 0.135, and complexity was 0.038. Thus, in terms of ranking, integrity was reported to be of the highest priority among the five criteria attributes.