A survey of reversible watermarking techniques for data hiding with ROI-tamper detection in medical images

Abstract

Digital watermarking in the field of medical images is becoming a new research focus. Modern medical equipments produce mass digital images and data everyday [1]. The integrity of such records needs be protected from unauthorized modification. One of the security measures that can be used is watermarking as traditional technologies for data security such as cryptography, digital authentication etc cannot fully meet the requirements [2]. With digital watermarking ,confidentiality and integrity of a medical image can be achieved by hiding the Electronic Patient Record (EPR data) in corresponding medical images and can have wide applications in the field of Tele- medicine. But at the same time, diagnostic quality of the medical images should not be compromised. The objective of this paper is to discuss some of the most efficient techniques suitable for watermarking of medical images. These methods are based on modified difference expansion, CDCS, Secondary LSB replacement and are reversible in nature. These techniques aim at increasing the data hiding capacity, without distortion of diagnostically important information and also provides ROI authentication and temper detection. © 2013 Springer-Verlag.