Protecting patient privacy from unauthorized release of medical images using a bio-inspired wavelet-based watermarking approach

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Abstract

This paper identifies a novel digital watermarking approach for copyright protection and authentication of medical images based on the wavelet transformation. We consider the problem of protecting patientsʼ medical records and tracing illegally distributed medical images in a group communication environment. We employ the particle swarm algorithm and genetic algorithm optimization principles to obtain performance improvement in our work. In the proposed method, the strength of the embedded watermark and noise are controlled to prevent the images from being used directly regarding to visual properties of the host signal. These parameters and also the places of the embedded watermarks are varied to find the most suitable ones for images with different characteristics. The experimental results show that the proposed algorithm yields a watermark which is invisible to human eyes, robust against a wide variety of common attacks and reliable enough for tracing colluders.

Section snippets

Pegah Fakhari received her B.Sc. degree in Electrical Engineering from Tehran University, Tehran, Iran in 2007. Her research interests include pattern recognition, digital signal and image processing, image and video watermarking, wavelets, neural network, fuzzy logic and bio-inspired optimization approaches like genetic algorithm (GA), invasive weeds optimization (IWO) and particle swarm (PSO).

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    Pegah Fakhari received her B.Sc. degree in Electrical Engineering from Tehran University, Tehran, Iran in 2007. Her research interests include pattern recognition, digital signal and image processing, image and video watermarking, wavelets, neural network, fuzzy logic and bio-inspired optimization approaches like genetic algorithm (GA), invasive weeds optimization (IWO) and particle swarm (PSO).

    Ehsan Vahedi received his B.Sc. degree in Electrical Engineering from K.N. Toosi University of Technology, Tehran, Iran, in 2004. He also received his M.Sc. degree in Electrical Engineering from University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran in 2008. He is currently a PhD candidate at the University of British Columbia (UBC), Vancouver, Canada. His research interests include statistical signal and image processing, communication networks, image and video watermarking, wavelets, encryption and bio-inspired optimization.

    Caro Lucas received his M.Sc. degree in Electrical Engineering from University of Tehran, Iran in 1973. He obtained his Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of California-Berkeley, USA in 1976. Dr. Lucas was an Assistant Professor at the Department of Systems Science, University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA). He also used to be a Visiting Associate Professor at Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences, University of California-Berkeley and Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at University of Toronto, Canada. In 1977, he joined the school of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Tehran, Iran where he is now a professor with tenure. Dr. Lucas has published more than 150 journal papers so far and his research interests are in the areas of control systems and bio-inspired optimization approaches with applications in Electrical Engineering.

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