Robust watermarking for medical image authentication based on DWT with QR codes in telemedicine

Abstract

© Springer International Publishing AG 2018. Recently, the exchange of medical images over the internet in order for diagnosis, treatment and telemedicine consulting in remote areas has become more important. As a result of information exchanging, and as the data in question is sensitive, watermark embedding is then used in the medical image processing in order to prevent the digital content from being modified without permission as well as to verify the authenticity of medical images. In this paper, Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT) based image watermarking method are used to hide patient’s data into the Region of Interest (ROI) to show the identity and to verify the data authenticity. The contents of ROI is important for diagnostic decision making. Thus, in this paper, the researchers give priority to the imperceptibility performance. Patient’s data will be taken to create a Quick Response (QR) code before embedding watermarks in order to increase the security level of data and the data capacity. The experiment’s results reveal that imperceptibility performance can be achieved. This watermark embedding approach is high in the Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratio (PSNR) values and robust from various attacks. The extracted watermark can be decoded back into text information although it was attacked.