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A robust zero-watermarking algorithm for lossless copyright protection of medical images

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Abstract

The continuous orthogonal moments of images have become a main tool used in zero-watermarking algorithms in recent years. However, there is a problem that should not be neglected for existing zero-watermarking algorithms, which is known as numerical instability. Because the continuous orthogonal moments used in existing zero-watermarking algorithms are integer-order moments, this problem affects the computational accuracy of such moments and thus affects the performance of zero-watermarking algorithms. Therefore, in this paper, the integer-order radial harmonic Fourier moments (IoRHFMs) are firstly extended to fractional-order radial harmonic Fourier moments (FoRHFMs) to effectively mitigate the problem of numerical instability and improve the computational accuracy of IoRHFMs, and then a FoRHFM-based zero-watermarking algorithm for medical images is proposed to achieve lossless copyright protection of medical images. The experimental results show that this algorithm is highly robust to geometric attacks and common attacks, and is superior to IoRHFM-based and other zero-watermarking algorithms.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (2020M670728), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (61802212, 61872203 and 61672124), the Password Theory Project of the 13th Five-Year Plan National Cryptography Development Fund (MMJJ20170203), the Shandong Provincial Natural Science Foundation (ZR2019BF017, ZR2020MF054 and ZR2020MF041), Liaoning Province Science and Technology Innovation Leading Talents Program Project (XLYC1802013), Key R&D Projects of Liaoning Province (2019020105-JH2/103), Major Scientific and Technological Innovation Projects of Shandong Province (2019JZZY010127, 2019JZZY010132 and 2019JZZY010201), Plan of Youth Innovation Team Development of Colleges and Universities in Shandong Province (SD2019-161), Jinan City “20 universities” Funding Projects (2020GXRC056 and2019GXRC031), and the Project of Shandong Province Higher Educational Science and Technology Program (J18KA331).

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Correspondence to Xingyuan Wang, Chunpeng Wang or Tingting Zhao.

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Xia, Z., Wang, X., Wang, C. et al. A robust zero-watermarking algorithm for lossless copyright protection of medical images. Appl Intell 52, 607–621 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10489-021-02476-2

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