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A digital watermarking method for medical images resistant to print-scan based on QR code

Authors:
Weixia Chen
Weixia Chen
Weixia Chen
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Qin Li
Qin Li
Qin Li
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Xiaoyan Tang
Xiaoyan Tang
Xiaoyan Tang
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Qiyong Pan
Qiyong Pan
Qiyong Pan
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Abstract and Figures

Medical images are important records to improve people’s health care, and their security has become an important issue when they are transmitted through various media especially print and scan equipments. This paper proposes a digital watermarking method for medical images based on live QR code, DWT-SVD, Hough transform and bilinear interpolation. A live QR code including private information was embedded into the SVD blocks of LL3sub-band wavelet of medical image. Adjusting the embedding strength, a trade-off between invisibility and robustness was achieved. We printed and scanned the watermarked medical image with common printers and scanners and get the watermarked images after print-scanning. In extraction method, the Hough transform was used to detect the edge of the watermarked medical image and calculate the rotation angle and scaling ratio, and bilinear interpolation was used to correct geometric distortion of watermarked image. Then we extracted live QR code from corrected image successfully. Experimental results indicated that the proposed method provides sufficient security for medical images against print and scan attacks.
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Vol.:(0123456789)
Multimedia Tools and Applications (2024) 83:52197–52218
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-023-17155-2
1 3
A digital watermarking method formedical images resistant
toprint‑scan based onQR code
WeixiaChen1· QinLi2,3· XiaoyanTang1· QiyongPan1
Received: 6 March 2023 / Revised: 16 July 2023 / Accepted: 15 September 2023 /
Published online: 10 November 2023
© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2023
Abstract
Medical images are important records to improve people’s health care, and their security
has become an important issue when they are transmitted through various media especially
print and scan equipments. This paper proposes a digital watermarking method for medical
images based on live QR code, DWT-SVD, Hough transform and bilinear interpolation. A
live QR code including private information was embedded into the SVD blocks of LL3sub-
band wavelet of medical image. Adjusting the embedding strength, a trade-off between
invisibility and robustness was achieved. We printed and scanned the watermarked medical
image with common printers and scanners and get the watermarked images after print-
scanning. In extraction method, the Hough transform was used to detect the edge of the
watermarked medical image and calculate the rotation angle and scaling ratio, and bilin-
ear interpolation was used to correct geometric distortion of watermarked image. Then we
extracted live QR code from corrected image successfully. Experimental results indicated
that the proposed method provides sufficient security for medical images against print and
scan attacks.
Keywords Digital watermarking· Medical images· QR code· DWT-SVD· Hough
transform· Print and scan attacks
1 Introduction
Nowadays, protection of medical images is a challenging task with the rapid growth of
computer and internet technology applied in the medical field. Medical images such as
Computerized Tomography (CT), Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), X-ray are trans-
mitted easily by computers, printers, scanners and other transmission equipment. The
* Qiyong Pan
panqy@cslg.edu.cn
1 School ofElectronic andInformation Engineering, Changshu Institute ofTechnology,
Changshu215500, China
2 School ofPhysical Science andTechnology, Soochow University, Soochow215000, China
3 Medical Image Center, Changshu No.2 People’s Hospital, Changshu215500, China
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