Robust zero-watermarking scheme for ensuring security and authenticity of color medical images in unsecured healthcare networks

Robust zero-watermarking scheme for ensuring security and authenticity of color medical images in unsecured healthcare networks

연구 분야: Databases

학회: Multimedia Tools and Applications

In today’s healthcare landscape, the widespread use of color images is driven by technological advancements. However, the security of these data becomes a paramount concern when transmitted over unsecured networks. Conventional watermarking, while effective, can inadvertently alter original medical data during insertion. The authors introduce a zero-watermarking algorithm tailored for color medical images to address this challenge, leveraging the Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT). This innovative technique employs a Quick Response (QR) code as a watermark, capable of accommodating multiple watermarks such as patient photographs, medical reports, hospital logos, and EPR (Electronic Patient Record) data simultaneously, further improving the security of transmitted medical data. The approach enhances security by utilizing the Arnold Cat Map (ACM) scrambling technique and optimizes storage efficiency by applying Lempel–Ziv–Welch (LZW) compression to the zero-watermarked data. The method consistently achieves an average Normalized Correlation (NC) value of 0.98 for signal processing attacks and 0.90 for geometrical attacks, reaffirming its robustness and reliability. The experimental findings demonstrate the effectiveness of the suggested lossless approach in real-time e-healthcare applications.