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Watermarking Techniques used in Medical Images: a Survey

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Abstract

The ever-growing numbers of medical digital images and the need to share them among specialists and hospitals for better and more accurate diagnosis require that patients’ privacy be protected. As a result of this, there is a need for medical image watermarking (MIW). However, MIW needs to be performed with special care for two reasons. Firstly, the watermarking procedure cannot compromise the quality of the image. Secondly, confidential patient information embedded within the image should be flawlessly retrievable without risk of error after image decompressing. Despite extensive research undertaken in this area, there is still no method available to fulfill all the requirements of MIW. This paper aims to provide a useful survey on watermarking and offer a clear perspective for interested researchers by analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of different existing methods.

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to acknowledge Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) for providing facilities and resources to get this work done. Also many thanks to the Research Management Center (RMC) of Universiti Teknologi Malaysia as well as Malaysian International Scholarship (MIS) for funding and supporting this research and providing excellent research environment in which this work was conducted and the scientific research targets fully accomplished.

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  1. Computer Vision, Video, and Image Processing (CvviP) Research Laboratory, Department of Electronics and Computer Engineering, Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, 81310, Skudai, Johor, Malaysia

    Seyed Mojtaba Mousavi & S. A. R. Abu-Bakar

  2. Department of Electrical Engineering, Najafabad Branch, Islamic Azad University, Isfahan, Iran

    Alireza Naghsh

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  1. Seyed Mojtaba Mousavi
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Mousavi, S.M., Naghsh, A. & Abu-Bakar, S.A.R. Watermarking Techniques used in Medical Images: a Survey. J Digit Imaging 27, 714–729 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10278-014-9700-5

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