Title: Integer wavelet transform-based data hiding scheme for medical image protection

Authors: Moad Med Sayah; Zermi Narima; Khaldi Amine; Kafi Med Redouane

Addresses: Department of Electronics, Faculty of Sciences and Technology, Electrical Engineering Laboratory, University of Kasdi Merbah, 30000, Ouargla, Algeria ' Electronics Department, Faculty of Engineering Sciences, Laboratories of Automation and Signals of Annaba (LASA), Badji Mokhtar Annaba University, 23000, Annaba, Algeria ' Computer Science Department, Faculty of Sciences and Technology, Artificial Intelligence and Information Technology Laboratory (LINATI), University of Kasdi Merbah, 30000, Ouargla, Algeria ' Department of Electronics, Faculty of Sciences and Technology, Electrical Engineering Laboratory, University of Kasdi Merbah, 30000, Ouargla, Algeria

Abstract: A crucial security and protection challenge today in telemedicine is how to ensure the confidentiality of sensitive data sent over the internet and limit access to specified designated information. To keep such details private, we propose in this work a robust and blind medical image watermarking approach that combines integer wavelet transform (IWT) and singular value decomposition (SVD). Low embedding capacity is a potential drawback of modern integer wavelet transform (IWT)-based watermarking systems. A secure high capacity watermarking scheme based on IWT is proposed in this work to overcome this specific limitation. According to experiment results on imperceptibility and robustness, the proposed solution efficiently maintains a significant quality of watermarked images and the watermark is resistant to the most commonly used attacks in watermarking. The integration of information about the patient in his medical image will avoid any confusion between two images.

Keywords: medical image; digital watermarking; blind watermarking; integer wavelet transform; IWT; singular value decomposition; SVD; QR code.

DOI: 10.1504/IJMEI.2025.149546

International Journal of Medical Engineering and Informatics, 2025 Vol.17 No.6, pp.581 - 596

Received: 26 Aug 2022
Accepted: 03 Dec 2022
Published online: 07 Nov 2025 *

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