Usage of watermarking techniques in medical imaging

Abstract

In this paper, we present the usage of watermarking techniques in medical imaging, and especially for security goals, the watermarking is considered a great solution to protect the personal data of patients during the medical images and telemedicine data exchange. This paper is devised in two parts. The first one is reserved for an overview on image watermarking with a presentation of the most important requirements of watermarking (robustness, imperceptibility and capacity). We offer also the general scheme of watermarking with the two essential phases and different types of attacks. Furthermore, we present a classification of watermarking techniques based on various parameters such as: insertion domain, human perception and detection methods, in the end of the section we display some metrics and benchmarks for analysis the performance of the watermarking technique. The second part is reserved for the usage of watermarking techniques in medical imaging especially for integrity verification, authentication and data hiding, we also discuss a literature review on watermarking techniques for medical image. In addition, we present the concept of telemedicine and telehealth fields and the importance of watermarking in the modern health care.