Skip to main content

Advertisement

SpringerLink
Log in

IWT-MDE based reversible thermal image watermarking enhanced with secret sharing mechanism

  • Published:
Multimedia Tools and Applications Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Telemedicine systems are used to transfer medical images between hospitals and doctors for consultation in many countries recently. It is crucial to ensure integrity of medical images transferred on unencrypted channels. Many medical image watermarking techniques have been proposed in the literature to deal with this problem. Thermal imaging to detect dense vascular regions is a new medical imaging modality gaining popularity to enhance diagnosis of breast cancer. Thermal images with large smooth areas and Region of Interest (ROI) have different characteristics compared to traditional medical images and require new image watermarking methods. A new thermal image watermarking algorithm utilizing Integer Wavelet Transform (IWT), Modified Difference Expansion (MDE) and Shamir’s Secret Sharing Scheme (SSSS) has been proposed for e-healthcare applications in this paper. IWT coefficients of thermal image are expanded by the MDE to make more consecutive blocks expandable. Location Map (LM) becomes more compressible if there are many consecutive blocks. Thus, larger ROI can be watermarked by the proposed method. The method also uses SSSS to share LM into meaningless shares embedded into border regions. Sharing LM by the SSSS makes it possible to reconstruct it even if some of the thermal image borders are removed inadvertently or modified on purpose to break the watermark. Experimental results indicate that the proposed method has better embedding capacity and good imperceptibility compared to similar methods reported in the literature. Besides, it has expanded ROI size and also is the first method which considers border region attacks in medical image watermarking.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5
Fig. 6
Fig. 7
Fig. 8
Fig. 9
Fig. 10
Fig. 11
Fig. 12
Fig. 13
Fig. 14
Fig. 15
Fig. 16

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. Alattar AM (2004) Reversible watermark using the difference expansion of a generalized integer transform. IEEE Trans Image Process 13(8):1147–1156

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  2. Al-Haj A (2014) Secured telemedicine using region-based watermarking with tamper localization. J Digit Imaging 27(6):737–750

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Das S, Kundu MK (2013) Effective management of medical information through ROI-lossless fragile image watermarking technique. Comput Methods Prog Biomed 111(3):662–675

    Article  Google Scholar 

  4. Daubechies I, Sweldens W (1998) Factoring wavelet transforms into lifting steps. J Fourier Anal Appl 4(3):247–269

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  5. Deng X et al (2013) Authentication and recovery of medical diagnostic image using dual reversible digital watermarking. J Nanosci Nanotechnol 13(3):2099–2107

    Article  Google Scholar 

  6. Eswaraiah R, Reddy ES (2015) Robust medical image watermarking technique for accurate detection of tampers inside region of interest and recovering original region of interest. IET Image Process 9(8):615–625

    Article  Google Scholar 

  7. Eswaraiah R, Sreenivasa Reddy E (2014) Medical image watermarking technique for accurate tamper detection in ROI and exact recovery of ROI. International Journal of Telemedicine and Applications 2014:13

    Article  Google Scholar 

  8. Guo X, Zhuang TG (2009) A region-based lossless watermarking scheme for enhancing security of medical data. J Digit Imaging 22(1):53–64

    Article  Google Scholar 

  9. Huang L (2014) A fragile watermark method for improving medical images security. J Comput 9(9):2043–2049

    Google Scholar 

  10. Liew S-C, Liew S-W, Zain JM (2013) Tamper localization and lossless recovery watermarking scheme with ROI segmentation and multilevel authentication. J Digit Imaging 26(2):316–325

    Article  Google Scholar 

  11. Maheshkar S (2017) Region-based hybrid medical image watermarking for secure telemedicine applications. Multimed Tools Appl 76(3):3617–3647

    Article  Google Scholar 

  12. Makbol NM, Khoo BE, Rassem TH (2016) Block-based discrete wavelet transform-singular value decomposition image watermarking scheme using human visual system characteristics. IET Image Process 10(1):34–52

    Article  Google Scholar 

  13. Mishra A et al (2014) Optimized gray-scale image watermarking using DWT–SVD and Firefly Algorithm. Expert Syst Appl 41(17):7858–7867

    Article  Google Scholar 

  14. Nyeem H, Boles W, Boyd C (2013) Utilizing least significant bit-planes of RONI pixels for medical image watermarking. Digital Image Computing: Techniques and Applications (DICTA), 2013 International Conference on. IEEE

  15. Parah SA et al (2017) Information hiding in medical images: a robust medical image watermarking system for E-healthcare. Multimed Tools Appl 76(8):10599–10633

    Article  Google Scholar 

  16. Shamir A (1979) How to share a secret. Commun ACM 22(11):612–613

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  17. Shi H, Lv F (2010) A blind digital watermark technique for color image based on integer wavelet transform." Biomedical Engineering and Computer Science (ICBECS), 2010 International Conference on. IEEE, 1–4

  18. Silva LF, Saade DCM, Sequeiros GO, Silva AC, Paiva AC, Bravo RS, Conci A (2014) A New Database for Breast Research with Infrared Image. Journal of Medical Imaging and Health Informatics 4(1):92–100

    Article  Google Scholar 

  19. Thabit R, Khoo BE (2015) Medical image authentication using SLT and IWT schemes. Multimed Tools Appl:1–24

  20. Ulutas M, Ulutas G, Nabiyev V (2011) Medical image security and EPR hiding using Shamir's secret sharing scheme. J Syst Softw 84(3):341–353

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Engineering, Karadeniz Technical University, 61080, Trabzon, Turkey

    Arda Ustubioglu, Guzin Ulutas & Beste Ustubioglu

Authors
  1. Arda Ustubioglu
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Guzin Ulutas
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Beste Ustubioglu
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Arda Ustubioglu.

Ethics declarations

Conflicts of interest

The authors declare that this article is original, has not been published before, is not currently being considered for publication elsewhere and there is no conflict of interest regarding the publication. The authors confirm that the manuscript has been read and approved by all named authors and that there are no other persons who satisfied the criteria for authorship but are not listed. The authors further confirm that the order of authors listed in the manuscript has been approved by all of them.

Additional information

Publisher’s note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Ustubioglu, A., Ulutas, G. & Ustubioglu, B. IWT-MDE based reversible thermal image watermarking enhanced with secret sharing mechanism. Multimed Tools Appl 78, 22269–22299 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-019-7529-0

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Revised:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-019-7529-0

Keywords

Search

Navigation