Quantization based multiple medical information watermarking for secure e-health

• Published in: Multimedia tools and applications 2019-02, Vol.78 (4), p.3911-3923
• Main Authors: Chauhan, Digvijay Singh, Singh, Amit Kumar, Kumar, Basant, Saini, J. P.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Algorithms; Bit error rate; Channel noise; Computer Communication Networks; Computer Science; Data Structures and Information Theory; Data transmission; Embedding; Error correcting codes; Error correction; Error correction & detection; Health; Image transmission; Medical imaging; Multimedia Information Systems; Special Purpose and Application-Based Systems; Theft; Turbo codes; Watermarking; Wavelet analysis
• ISSN: 1380-7501; 1573-7721
• DOI: 10.1007/s11042-017-4886-4

In this paper, an improved wavelet based medical image watermarking algorithm is proposed. Initially, the proposed technique decomposes the cover medical image into ROI and NROI regions and embedding three different watermarks into the non-region of interest (NROI) part of the transformed DWT cover image for compact and secure medical data transmission in E-health environment. In addition, the method addressing the problem of channel noise distortion may lead to faulty watermark by applying error correcting codes (ECCs) before embedding them into the cover image. Further, the bit error rates (BER) performance of the proposed method is determined for different kind of attacks including ‘Checkmark’ attacks. Experimental results indicate that the Turbo code performs better than BCH (Bose-Chaudhuri-Hochquenghem) error correction code. Furthermore, the experimental results validate the effectiveness of the proposed framework in terms of BER and embedding capacity compared to other state-of-the-art methods. Therefore, the proposed method finds potential application in prevention of patient identity theft in e-health applications.