A Secured and Robust Medical Image Watermarking Approach for Protecting Integrity of Medical Images

In this paper, a novel medical image watermarking (MIW) technique for tele - medicine applications is proposed. In this approach homomorphic transform (HT), redundant discrete wavelet transform (RDWT) and singular value decomposition (SVD) transforms are successfully utilized for developing an effective watermarking technique. Reflectance component of medical host image is obtained using HT, on which RDWT decomposition and SVD are applied. Similarly medical watermark image is processed with RDWT and SVD. Singular values (Svs) were used for embedding the watermark image into host image. 2-D chaotic Arnold transform (AT) is used for providing extra security to the watermark image by encrypting the watermarked image. Moreover, proposed technique is also tested for several wavelet families. Robustness and imperceptibility of the proposed technique is enhanced as depicted in experimental results under various attacks. Furthermore, better robustness is attained from proposed technique on comparing it with other formerly reported schemes.