C14. Robust Watermarking Scheme for Telemedicine Applications

This paper presents a blind watermarking algorithm for medical images and medical video frames based on Principle Component Analysis (PCA) and Digital Wavelet Transform (DWT). Quantization Index Modulation (QIM) is used as a method for blindness of our scheme. Different types of medical video frames are used in the evaluation process such as MRI, CT, Ultrasound and X-Rays. Experimental results show high imperceptibility where there is no noticeable difference between the watermarked video frames and the original frames (PSNR ;:::; 51 dB). By varying the watermark size, high capacity watermark is achieved without affecting the quality of the medical frame. The performance of the proposed scheme is investigated when varying the impact factor and the compression rate. Simulation results indicate that the proposed algorithm achieves high robustness against compression and higher watermark capacity.