Engineering Science and Technology, an International Journal 20 (2017) 1366–1379

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Engineering Science and Technology,

an International Journal
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jestch

Full Length Article

An efficient medical image watermarking scheme based on FDCuT–DCT

Rohit Thanki a,⇑, Surekha Borra b, Vedvyas Dwivedi a, Komal Borisagar c
a
Faculty of Technology and Engineering, C. U. Shah University, Wadhwan City, India
b
Department of ECE, K. S. Institute of Technology, Bangalore, India
c
Department of ECE, Atmiya Institute of Technology and Science, Rajkot, India

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: In this paper, a blind medical image watermarking scheme based on Fast Discrete Curvelet Transform
Received 23 March 2017 (FDCuT) and Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) is proposed. FDCuT is applied on the medical image to
Revised 16 June 2017 get different frequency coefficients of its curvelet decomposition. On the high frequency curvelet coeffi-
Accepted 19 June 2017
cients of the medical image, block wise DCT is applied to get different frequency coefficients. Then mid
Available online 1 July 2017
band frequency coefficients of the medical image are modified by White Gaussian Noise (WGN)
sequences according to watermark bit to get watermarked medical image. At extraction end, blind recov-
Keywords:
ery of watermark data is performed by correlation of WGN sequences. The proposed scheme is tested for
Blind watermarking
Fast Discrete Curvelet Transform (FDCuT)
its effectiveness on various types of medical images such as X-ray, Ultrasound (US), Magnetic Resonant
Medical Image Security Imaging (MRI) and Computerized Tomography (CT). Result analysis shows that imperceptibility of water-
Robustness marked medical image is better as PSNR is above 45 dB for all types of the medical images. In addition,
Telemedicine the robustness of the scheme is better than an existing scheme for a similar set of medical images in
White Gaussian Noise (WGN) terms of Normalized Correlation (NC). Experimental results show that scheme is robust to geometric
attacks, signal processing attacks and JPEG compression attacks. An analysis is also carried out to verify
the performance of the proposed scheme to support binary watermarks with different details in it: text
and logos. Moreover, the proposed scheme resulted in zero false positive rate when tested on 100 non-
watermarked images.
Ó 2017 Karabuk University. Publishing services by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC
BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

1. Introduction These medical images are corrupted or modified by various

During the last few years, the medical information of the
patient is transferred from one doctor to another doctor for better
health solution and treatment. Transferring medical information
over a transmission medium is known as telemedicine. Telemedi-
cine is defined by The American Telemedicine Association (ATA)
as ‘‘the use of medical information exchanged from one site to
another via electronic communications to improve a patient’s clin-
ical health status, including an increasing variety of applications
and services using two-way video, email, smart phones, wireless
tools and other forms of telecommunications technology” [1,2].
The telemedicine application includes emergency treatment, home
monitor, military applications and medical education [2]. When a
medical image is corrupted or modified by someone during its
transferring over any open access network, it leads to deviations
in the diagnosis which may create serious health issues for any
individual. Thus, the security of medical image is necessary.
⇑ Corresponding author.
E-mail address: rohitthanki9@gmail.com (R. Thanki).
Peer review under responsibility of Karabuk University.
manipulations when it is transferred to the internet and another
transmission/storage medium. Various approaches and techniques
are available for the security of medical image. The digital
watermarking technique is one of the solutions for the security
of medical images. This paper proposed a robust and secure hybrid
watermarking technique for medical image copyright protection.
A variety of watermarking techniques are proposed by researchers
for the security of medical images in the last seven years.
1.1. Related work
Thakkar et al. [3] have proposed wavelet transform and block
SVD based blind watermarking technique for the security of med-
ical images. In this technique, watermark logo and Electronic
Patient Record (EPR) data are embedded into the singular values
of wavelet subbands of the host medical image. This technique
provides robustness against all possible watermarking attacks.
The limitation of this technique is that it is only applicable for
Region of Interest (ROI) of medical image. Nagpal et al. [4] pro-
posed wavelet transform, neural network, and Rivest-Shamir-
Adleman (RSA) encryption based robust watermarking technique

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jestch.2017.06.001
2215-0986/Ó 2017 Karabuk University. Publishing services by Elsevier B.V.
This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
 R. Thanki et al. / Engineering Science and Technology, an International Journal 20 (2017) 1366–1379
for the security of medical images. In this technique, RSA encryp-
tion is applied on watermark image to get a scrambled and secure
watermark image, which can further be embedded into wavelet
subbands of the host medical image using Artificial Neural Net-
work (ANN) approach.
Kishore et al. [5] have given a review of various medical image
watermarking techniques and have provided a comparison of three
medical image watermarking techniques such as RSA-Discrete
Wavelet Transform (DWT), DWT-Artificial Neural Network (ANN)
and DWT-SVD. The comparison shows that the DWT-SVD based
technique performed better than other two techniques. Mahmood
[6] have proposed an adaptive and non-reversible watermarking
technique for protection of medical images. In this technique, after
diving host medical image into blocks, Region of Background (ROB)
is found using segmentation map approach. Then the entropy of
each blocks are calculated and few low entropy valued blocks are
chosen for embedding. The DCT is applied to these blocks of host
medical image, and the watermark data is inserted into DCT coef-
ficients of blocks using LSB approach or difference expansion
approach. This technique has low imperceptibility for water-
marked medical image.
Singh et al. [7] have proposed two DWT, SVD, and cryptography
based robust watermarking techniques for the security of medical
images. In this technique, authors used three different error cor-
recting codes for encoding watermark data. They are: Hamming,
Bose-Chaudhuri-Hocquenghem (BCH) code and Reed-Solomon
code. The encoded watermark data is embedded into wavelet coef-
ficients of the medical image in wavelet based technique and sin-
gular value of medical image in SVD based technique, respectively.
Authors suggested that Reed-Solomon based encoded watermark
data performed better than other two error correcting codes.
Venkatram et al. [8] have proposed 2D Lifting Wavelet Transform
(LWT) and SVD based medical image watermarking technique. In
this technique, first LWT is applied to host medical image to
get all wavelet sub-bands. Then SVD is applied on all wavelet
sub-bands to obtain and modify the singular value of each sub-
band according to watermark bits so as to get watermarked med-
ical image. The limitation of this technique is that it does not use
any security approach for host medical image or watermark image.
Rathi et al. [9] have proposed a region of non-interest (RONI) and
LWT based medical image watermarking technique. This technique
is modified version of Venkatram technique. In this technique, first
RONI of the medical image is extracted and then LWT is applied on
it to get wavelet coefficients. Then multiple watermark data are
inserted into wavelet coefficients using a secret key.
Kumar et al. [10] have proposed a spread spectrum based med-
ical image watermarking technique in DWT. In this technique, two
PN sequences are inserted into horizontal and vertical wavelet
coefficients of the medical image when watermark bit is zero.
For the extraction of a watermark bit, the correlation between
PN sequences is performed. Based on the correlation results,
watermark bit value is set. Mostafa et al. [11] have proposed a dis-
crete wavelet packet transform and cryptography based water-
marking technique for protection of EPR information and medical
image. The EPR data is encoded using BCH code in this technique.
Here, first DWPT is applied to host medical image to get wavelet
subbands. Then two wavelet subbands are chosen for embedding
encoded EPR data. These two wavelet subbands are divided into
blocks and each block are modified by watermark bit. In this tech-
nique, each block is embedded with one bit.
Huang et al. [12] have described a DCT based medical image
watermarking. Kallel et al. [13] proposed a spatial domain medical
image watermarking technique. In this technique, a hash function
is applied to the 7th bit of host medical image and then XORed
with diagnosis information of doctor to generate the watermark
information. This watermark information is inserted in LSB of host
1367
medical image to generate watermarked medical image. Dey et al.
[14] proposed a blind watermarking technique using canny edge
detection on ROI and RONI to get the edges of the medical image.
Later, the watermark data is embedded into the edges of the med-
ical image to get watermarked medical image.
Pal et al. [15] have described a watermarking technique using
even-odd shifting approach and difference approach for color med-
ical image protection. In this technique, the R channel of the host
medical image is modified using even-odd shifting approach, while
B channel is modified using difference approach according to
watermark bit. This technique has not used any security approach
for watermark data or host medical image. Dey et al. [16,17] pro-
posed a hybrid medical watermarking technique using three image
processing transforms such as DCT, DWT, and SVD. Authors pro-
posed this technique for protection of ECG signal and Ultrasound
video. In this technique, first a 2D DWT is applied to host medical
data to get LL, LH, HL and HH subband of host medical data. The
DCT is applied on HH subband and then SVD is applied on DCT
coefficients to get singular value of host medical data. The singular
value of host medical data is modified using singular value of the
HH sub band of the watermark image after applying DWT and
DCT on it. This technique too has not used any security mechanism
for encrypting the medical data. Dey et al. [18] have described
wavelet transform and Pseudo Noise sequences based watermark-
ing technique for the protection of biomedical signal. In this tech-
nique, detailed wavelet coefficients such as horizontal, vertical and
diagonal are modified by three PN sequences according to water-
mark bits. Chakraborty et al. [19] have proposed particle swarm
optimization based medical information hiding. This technique is
modified version of Dey technique [18] developed to achieve better
imperceptibility. Biswas et al. [20] proposed a visible watermark-
ing technique based on fuzzy logic and Harris corner detection
for a medical image.
Acharjee et al. [21] proposed motion vector estimation based
watermarking for the security of biomedical videos. In this tech-
nique, first find motion vector of the host medical videos for
watermark embedding using motion vector estimation. Then
watermark data is resampled according to selected size of motion
vector of host medical video frame. Finally, watermark data is
embedded into host medical video frame using bit shifting opera-
tion. This procedure is repeated for all frames of medical video to
generate watermarked medical video. Nyeem et al. [22] gave
requirements and design parameters for effective medical image
watermarking. Singh et al. [23,24] have proposed hybrid water-
marking techniques for medical image protection. These tech-
niques are designed by DWT, SVD and spread spectrum
approach. Authors described two approaches using correlation
property of PN sequences to achieve blind extraction. In first
approach, horizontal and vertical wavelet subbands of host med-
ical image are modified by two PN sequences according to water-
mark bits. In second approach, singular value of horizontal and
vertical wavelet subbands of host medical image is modified by
two PN sequences according to the watermark bits. Authors used
BCH encryption method for security of watermark data. Eswaraiah
et al. [25] described ROI based watermarking for medical image
tampering. This technique first finds ROI of the host medical
image and then converts this ROI into nonoverlapping blocks.
Then watermark bits are embedded into nonoverlapping blocks
of host medical image using LSB approach.
Rohit et al. [26] proposed a curvelet transform and CS theory
based watermarking for the security of multibiometric image pro-
tection. In this technique, high frequency curvelet coefficients of
host biometric image are modified according to sparse measure-
ment of watermark biometric image which is generated using
DCT and CS theory process. Bazargani et al. [27] gave a comparison
of robust watermarking techniques in wavelet, contourlet, and cur-
1368 R. Thanki et al. / Engineering Science and Technology, an International Journal 20 (2017) 1366–1379
velet domains for standard image protection. Xu et al. [28] pro-
posed a watermarking technique based on Fast Discrete Curvelet
Transform for standard image protection. In this technique, the
binary watermark data is embedded into low frequency curvelet
coefficients of the host image. Zhang et al. [29] proposed first
watermarking technique based on curvelet transform for copyright
protection. In this technique, image hash is computed using curve-
let transform. These hash values are embedded into a different
level of curvelet transform of the host image. Surekha et al.
[38,39] gave new watermarking schemes for copyright protection
using visual cryptography. These schemes are applicable for med-
ical image protection.
After reviewing papers, it is observed that most of the existing
watermarking schemes are designed using DWT, SVD, and DCT
and have less imperceptibility of watermarked medical images.
Many existing watermarking schemes have used the correlation
of PN sequences for blind extraction of the watermark. Also, the
robustness test of many existing watermarking schemes is missing
against various watermarking attacks. In this paper, a scheme is
proposed to overcome the limitations of Dey scheme [18], Singh
scheme [25] and Thakkar scheme [3]. The Dey scheme and Singh
scheme used two PN sequences and their correlation for blind
extraction of watermark data. These two schemes have less imper-
ceptibility for medical image of standard database and are less
robust against watermarking attacks. The reason behind chosen
these schemes is that it is most related to the proposed scheme
as the proposed scheme has also used the correlation of white
Gaussian noise sequences. Also, Thakkar scheme [3] has a limita-
tion that it is only applicable on Region of Interest (ROI) of medical
image. Thus, there is requirement for design of new watermarking
technique which overcomes the above mentioned problems in
watermarking field.
In this paper, a blind watermarking scheme is proposed for
securing medical images. The scheme is designed using Fast Dis-
crete Curvelet Transform (FDCuT), Discrete Cosine Transform
(DCT) and White Gaussian Noise (WGN) sequences. The scheme
is robust against geometric attacks, signal processing attacks and
JPEG compression attack. To suit the telemedicine applications, a
variety of copyright information in terms of the image, binary logo
and binary symbol are embedded into the medical image. To
implement this scheme, first FDCuT is applied on the medical
image. Then DCT is applied on the blocks of high frequency (HF)
curvelet subband with the size of 8
8. The mid band frequency
DCT coefficients of each DCT block are modified by two WGN
sequences to embed watermark bits. At extraction side, blind
watermark extraction is performed using correlation properties
of WGN sequence. Rest of the paper is organized as follows; in Sec-
tion 2, preliminaries used in the proposed scheme are given. Sec-
tion 3 gives the proposed scheme, whereas experimental results
and discussion are given in Section 4. Finally, the conclusions of
the paper are given in section 5.
2. Preliminaries
2.1. Fast Discrete Curvelet Transform (FDCuT)
The Discrete Time Curvelet Transform (DTCuT) is applied on the
image to get various frequency subbands. The DTCuT plays an
important role in image processing applications [30,31], as this
represents image into curves or edges. The discrete time curvelet
transform is linear and takes as input the Cartesian arrays of form
f [t1, t2], 0  t1, t2 < n, which allows the output as a collection of
coefficients:
X
C D ðj; l; kÞ :¼ 0 6 t1 ; t 2 < nf ½t 1 ; t2 /Dj;l;k ½t 1 ; t2 
where j = 0, 1, 2. . . is a scale parameter; l = 0, 1, 2. . . is an orientation
parameter; and k = (k1, k2) 2 Z2 is a translation parameter. The scale
parameter depends on the size of the image and is calculated as
log2 ðminðM; NÞ  3, where M, N is the size of row and column of
the image. The orientation parameter must be set to a multiplier
of 4 and the default value of orientation parameter is 16.
The discrete time curvelet transform has been redesigned with
a new mathematical architecture, which is simple and easy to be
implemented. It is known as a Fast Discrete Curvelet Transform
(FDCuT) [30,31]. This curvelet transform is divided into two types:
Unequi Spaced Fast Fourier Transform (USFFT) based FDCuT and
frequency wrapping based FDCuT. The USFFT based FDCuT is an
unequal size of the sample, complex and requires more computa-
tional time. The frequency wrapping based FDCuT is easy to imple-
ment and simpler to understand. Further, the computational time
of frequency wrapping based FDCuT is fast compared to USFFT
based FDCuT, and hence is chosen by many researchers. The imple-
menting steps of frequency wrapping based FDCuT is given below
[30,31]:
1. Take FFT of the image.
2. Divide FFT into a collection of Digital Corona Tiles (Fig. 1).
3. For each corona tile
 Translate the tile to the origin (Fig. 2(a, b)).
 Wrap the parallelogram shaped support of the tile around a
rectangle centered at the origin (Fig. 2(c)).
 Take the Inverse FFT of the wrapped support.
 Add the Curvelet array to the Collection of Curvelet
coefficients.
There are very few watermarking schemes where FDCuT is
used. The frequency wrapping based curvelet transform is used
in the proposed watermarking because it has equal sample rate
and low computational time. If frequency wrapping based curvelet
transform is applied on the image, it produces three different fre-
quency subbands such as Low Frequency (LF), Middle Frequency
(MF) and High Frequency (HF). The curvelet transform decomposes
the image into a number of different frequency coefficients cells
which are shown in Fig. 3. The number of cells depends on the size
of the image.
For example, an image with a size of 512
512 pixels are
decomposed using frequency wrapping based FDCuT with 6 scale
parameters and 16 orientation parameters into different cells, such
as C (1, 1) to C (1, 6). Where, C (1, 1) is a low frequency curvelet
coefficient, C (1, 2) to C (1, 5) are medium frequency curvelet coef-
ficients, and C (1, 6) is high frequency curvelet coefficient. The size
of the cells C (1, 1) to C (1, 5) is less than the actual size of image but
size of C (1, 6) is equal to the size of the image. The reason behind
chosen high frequency curvelet coefficients in proposed scheme is
ð1Þ
Fig. 1. The basic 2D Discrete Curvelet Transform.
 R. Thanki et al. / Engineering Science and Technology, an International Journal 20 (2017) 1366–1379 1369

Fig. 2. Wrapping data, initially inside a parallelogram, into a rectangle by periodicity. The black parallelogram is the tile which contains the frequency support of the Curvelet,
whereas the gray parallelograms are the replicas resulting from periodization. The rectangle is centered at the origin. The wrapped ellipse appears ‘‘broken into pieces” but
this is not an issue in the periodic rectangle, where the opposite edges are identified (taken from [30,31]).

Fig. 3. Curvelet Decomposition of an Image.

(a) Original Image

(b) Curvelet Coefficients of Image (c) High Frequency Curvelet Coefficients of Image
Fig. 4. Curvelet Coefficients of an Image.
1370 R. Thanki et al. / Engineering Science and Technology, an International Journal 20 (2017) 1366–1379

that it results in better imperceptibility and achieves good payload 3. Proposed scheme
capacity compared to other curvelet coefficients. The curvelet coef-
ficients of an image are shown in Fig. 4(b). Fig. 4(c) shows the high In this paper, a blind watermarking scheme based on
frequency curvelet coefficients of an image. FDCuT–DCT is proposed, to be more imperceptible and robust
against different watermarking attacks. In this scheme, FDCuT
2.2. Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) is applied on host medical image to get different frequency sub-
bands such as LF, MF, and HF. The reason behind choosing
For any digital image, it’s DCT and inverse DCT is calculated FDCuT in proposed scheme is that it represents an image in
using Eqs. (1) and (2), respectively [32]. The DCT can be applied terms of edges and provides better imperceptibility compared
on an image in two ways: block wise and without block wise. to another transforms. Also, when FDCuT is applied to the image,
the size of the high frequency sub bands is equal to the actual
XX
M1 N1 size of the image which provides more embedding capacity. Fur-
Fðu; v Þ ¼ aðuÞ  aðv Þ f ðx; yÞ ther, it is easy to perform watermark embedding in the proposed
x¼1 y¼1
    scheme. For FDCuT decomposition of an image, 7 scale parame-
ð2x þ 1Þup ð2y þ 1Þv p ter and 16 orientation parameter are used. A block-wise DCT is

cos cos ð2Þ
2M 2N applied on HF curvelet sub band of the host medical image. Then
pffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi pffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi two White Gaussian Noise sequences are inserted into mid band
where, aðuÞ ¼ 1=M for u = 0; aðuÞ ¼ 2=M for u = 1, 2, 3. . . M1; frequency DCT coefficients based on the watermark bits to gen-
pffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi pffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
aðv Þ ¼ 1=N for v = 0; aðv Þ ¼ 2=N for v = 1, 2, 3 . . . N1. erate watermarked medical image. In this technique, HF curvelet
subband is divided into 8
8 overlapped blocks to achieve
XX
M1 N1
better robustness. The blind extraction of watermark data is pos-
f ðx; yÞ ¼ aðuÞ  aðv Þ  Fðu; v Þ
u¼0 v ¼0
sible in proposed scheme using the correlation between WGN
   
ð2y þ 1Þv p
sequences and watermarked data. The steps for watermark
ð2x þ 1Þup

cos cos ð3Þ embedding and watermark extraction are given in the following
2M 2N
subsections.
The mid band DCT coefficients are used in the watermarking
application due to its following properties [33,34]. 3.1. Watermark embedding procedure

1. These coefficients of image do not change the visibility of the
image much.
2. These coefficients are less affected by watermarking attacks.
For the proposed robust watermarking scheme, block wise DCT
is applied on the image to different frequency subbands such as
low, mid band and high.
2.3. White Gaussian Noise (WGN) sequence
In signal processing, white noise is a random noise signal which
has a constant power spectral density [35]. Any sequence S[n] is
called a white noise sequence if
N Step 6. Generate two high uncorrelated White Gaussian Noise
SS ð x Þ ¼ ; p 6 x 6 p
2 (WGN) sequences using noise generator, each of size equal to the
where N is a real constant and is called white noise intensity. The
autocorrelation of white noise sequence is calculated as
N of the block based on following conditions.
RS ½n ¼ d½n
2
where d[n] is the unit impulse sequence.
The average power of white noise sequence is finite and uni-
formly distributed over all frequencies. If PSD of this sequence fol-
lows Gaussian distribution, then this sequence is called as White
Gaussian Noise (WGN) Sequence. In the discrete time domain, this
noise is a discrete signal whose samples are represented as a
sequence of uncorrelated random variables with zero mean and
some variance. In practice, each sample of the sequence has a nor-
mal distribution with zero mean where each pixel follows a Gaus-
sian distribution. In image processing, this random noise is
represented in two-dimensions. In the proposed robust water-
marking scheme, this noise sequence is used for blind extraction
of watermark bits at recovery side. The reason behind using this
sequence is that it results in highly uncorrelated sequences of dif-
ferent values. So it is easy to find a correlation between two
sequences in making a decision about watermark bit extraction.
In this scheme, a watermark bit is embedded into FDCuT-DCT of
host medical image using WGN sequences. The block diagram of a
proposed embedding procedure is given in Fig. 5. The algorithm for
watermark embedding is given below.
Step 1. Calculate the size of watermark image. The watermark
image is converting into the vector of watermark bit.
Step 2. Calculate the size of the host medical image.
Step 3. Apply frequency wrapping based FDCuT to get LF, MF
and HF subband of host medical image.
Step 4. Convert HF curvelet subband into non-overlapped
blocks.
Step 5. Apply block-wise DCT on non-overlapped blocks to get
coefficients like Low Band Frequency (LBF), Mid Band Frequency
(MBF) and High Band Frequency (HBF).
ð4Þ
size of MBF.
Step 7. Choose MBF DCT coefficients are chosen for watermark
bit embedding. Embed each watermark bit in MBF DCT coefficients
ð5Þ
 If watermark bit is zero then
Modified DCTblock ¼ DCTblock þ k  WGN Sequence 0 ð6Þ
where, Modified_DCTblock corresponds to the modified MBF
DCT coefficients of the block, DCTblock is original MBF DCT coef-
ficients of the block, k is the gain factor, and WGN_Sequence_0 is
WGN sequence for watermark bit 0.
 If watermark bit is one then
Modified DCTblock ¼ DCTblock þ k  WGN Sequence 1 ð7Þ
where, Modified_DCTblock corresponds to the modified MBF
DCT coefficients of the block, DCTblock is original MBF DCT coef-
ficients of the block, k is the gain factor, and WGN_Sequence_1 is
WGN sequence for watermark bit 1.
 This process is repeated for all the MBF DCT coefficients of each
block of host medical image.
 R. Thanki et al. / Engineering Science and Technology, an International Journal 20 (2017) 1366–1379 1371

Fig. 5. Block Diagram of Proposed Watermark Embedding Procedure.

Step 8. Apply inverse block-wise DCT on modified MBF coeffi-
cients keeping with other coefficients as it is so as to get modified
HF curvelet subband of host medical image.
Step 9. Apply Inverse frequency wrapping based FDCuT on mod-
ified HF curvelet subband to get watermarked medical image.
3.2. Watermark extraction procedure
In this scheme, a watermark bit is extracted blindly using the
correlation between watermarked medical image and two WGN
sequences. The block diagram of the proposed extraction proce-
dure is given in Fig. 6. The algorithm for watermark extraction is
given below.
Step 1. Calculate the size of watermarked medical
image.
Step 2. Apply frequency wrapping based FDCuT to get LF, MF
and HF subband of watermarked medical image.
Step 3. HF curvelet subband is converted into non-overlapped
blocks.
Step 4. Apply block-wise DCT on non-overlapped blocks to get
coefficients like Low Band Frequency (LBF), Mid Band Frequency
(MBF) and High Band Frequency (HBF).

Fig. 6. Block Diagram of Proposed Watermark Extraction Procedure.

1372 R. Thanki et al. / Engineering Science and Technology, an International Journal 20 (2017) 1366–1379
Step 5. Take the two highly uncorrelated White Gaussian Noise
(WGN) sequences which are generated during Watermark embed-
ding process.
Step 6. Extract he watermark bit from MBF DCT coefficients
based on the following conditions.
Correlation Sequence 1 ¼ corr2ðMBF DCTblock; WGN Sequence 1Þ
ð8Þ
Correlation Sequence 0 ¼ corr2ðMBF DCTblock; WGN Sequence 0Þ
ð9Þ
Step 7. If Correlation_Sequence_1 > Correlation_Sequence_0 then
watermark bit is set as bit 1. Otherwise, a watermark bit is set as
bit 0.
Step 8. Apply reshape on bits vector to get extracted watermark
image.
4. Simulation results
The proposed scheme is tested and analyzed by various medical
images such as X-ray, US, MRI, and CT. The size of these images is
1024
1024 pixels. The test host medical images are taken from
the MedPixTM Medical Image Database [36] and shown in Fig. 7.
The test medical images are 8 bit grayscale images.
A set of 3 watermark image with contents such copyright infor-
mation text in term of the image, logo with more smooth details
and logo with more sharp details are used for testing. The dimen-
sion of watermark images is 128
128 pixels. The watermark
images are 8 bit binary images (shown in Fig. 8). Here the size of
each watermark image is chosen same for better comparison of
schemes and better visualization of experiment results. The imple-
mentation of the proposed scheme is done on the laptop 2 GHz
core two Duo processor with 2 GB RAM using MATLAB 2013a
software.
In this proposed scheme, a medical image with size
1024
1024 pixels is tested as host image and FDCuT is applied
to it to get its curvelet coefficients. The high frequency curvelet
coefficients with size 1024
1024 are chosen for watermark
image embedding. Then high frequency curvelet coefficients are
(a) (b)
Fig. 7. Test Host Medical Image (a) X-ray (b) US (c) MRI (d) CT.
(a) Watermark 1 (WM1) (b) Watermark 2 (WM2)
Fig. 8. Test Watermark Image.
converted into 16,384 non-overlapping blocks with size 8
8.
The DCT coefficients of each block are obtained by application of
block-wise DCT on it. The watermark image with size 128
128
pixels is converted into a vector of size 16,384. Then according to
watermark bit value, MBF DCT coefficients value of each block of
a medical image is modified by two WGN sequences. The modified
16,384 blocks of medical image with watermark bits are obtained
after watermark embedding process. The inverse block-wise DCT is
applied to modified DCT to get modified high frequency curvelet
coefficients with the size of 1024
1024. Then inverse FDCuT is
applied to modified high frequency curvelet coefficients with
unmodified curvelet coefficients to get watermarked medical
image. Here, one watermark bit is embedded into each block of
the medical image. The maximum watermark data can be embed-
ded by this proposed scheme is calculated using below Eq. (10):
M
N
Maximum Watermark ¼ 2
ð10Þ
Blocksize
where M is row size and N is column size of Host Image,
respectively.
In this proposed scheme, the size of host medical image is
1024
1024 and block size is 8. Thus, the proposed scheme can
embed a maximum watermark image with a size of 128
128 pix-
els. The maximum payload of the proposed scheme can be 1 bit for
every 64 pixels of host medical image.
4.1. Performance measures
A peak signal to noise ratio (PSNR) is used to measure imper-
ceptibility between original host medical image and watermarked
medical image. The PSNR is given in Eq. (5). A PSNR depends on
Mean Square Error (MSE) which is an error between the original
image and processed image. The MSE is calculated using Eq. (6).
The MSE is measured in real value while PSNR is measured in dB
value. A high value of PSNR indicated more imperceptibility of
the algorithm.
!
2552
PSNR ¼ 10
log10 ð11Þ
MSE
(c) (d)
(c) Watermark 3 (WM3)
 R. Thanki et al. / Engineering Science and Technology, an International Journal 20 (2017) 1366–1379 1373

XX
1 M1 N1 4.2. Imperceptibility test
MSE ¼ ðCðx; yÞ  CWðx; yÞÞ2 ð12Þ
M
N x¼0 y¼0
An imperceptibility test of proposed scheme is tested using dif-
where, C is original host medical image and CW is watermarked ferent medical images like X-ray, US, MRI and CT. The test is per-
medical image, respectively. formed to check how degradation is appearing in the medical
The robustness of watermarking scheme can be measured by image after watermark data embedding into it. For any watermark-
normalized correlation (NC). The normalized correlation can be ing scheme, the watermarked image must appear close to the orig-
calculated using Eq. (7). NC measures the similarity between orig- inal image for better imperceptibility. For imperceptibility test,
inal watermark image and extracted watermark image. The robust- PSNR is calculated between original host medical image and water-
ness of any watermarking scheme is high if NC value is close to marked medical image, and NC is calculated between original
one. watermark image and extracted watermark image. The PSNR and
XM XN NC values of proposed scheme are compared with the existing
x¼1 y¼1
wðx; yÞ
w  ðx; yÞ technique [18]. Fig. 9 shows quantitative results of proposed
NC ¼ XM XN ð13Þ scheme when tested on a different set of host and watermark
x¼1 y¼1
w2 ðx; yÞ images. Results include watermarked medical images and
extracted watermark images. The watermark embedding proce-
In above equation, w is original watermark image and w⁄ is
dure is performed by a constant gain factor k with value 2.
extracted watermark image. Using above measures, imperceptibil-
In the proposed scheme, the performance of watermark embed-
ity test and robustness test of proposed scheme are performed for
ding process depends on the gain factor and the WGN sequences.
various medical images.

Test Image X-Ray US MRI CT

Watermarked
Image (after
embedding
WM1)

Extracted
Watermark 1

Watermarked
Image (after
embedding
WM2)

Extracted
Watermark 2

Watermarked
Image (after
embedding
WM3)

Extracted
Watermark 3

Fig. 9. Watermarked Medical Images and Extracted Watermark Images using Proposed Scheme using Gain Factor k = 2.
1374 R. Thanki et al. / Engineering Science and Technology, an International Journal 20 (2017) 1366–1379

Test Image X-Ray US MRI CT

Extracted
Watermark 1

Extracted
Watermark 2

Extracted
Watermark 3

(a) Using Gain Factor k = 4

Test Image X-Ray US MRI CT

Extracted
Watermark 1

Extracted
Watermark 2

Extracted
Watermark 3

(b) Using Gain Factor k = 6

Test Image X-Ray US MRI CT

Extracted
Watermark 1

Extracted
Watermark 2

Extracted
Watermark 3

(c) Using Gain Factor k = 8

Fig. 10. Extracted Watermark Images using Different Gain Factor k values.

While the value of WGN sequences is fixed, the value of gain factor gain factor k varies from 2 to 8, as per HVS property of watermark-
is variable. The gain factor affects the quality of watermarked med- ing requirements. The results in Fig. 9 show the extracted water-
ical images and extracted watermark images. Here, the range of mark image with some degradation without application of any
 R. Thanki et al. / Engineering Science and Technology, an International Journal 20 (2017) 1366–1379 1375

watermarking attacks. This happens because White Gaussian Noise
(WGN) sequences are used for embedding the watermark bits and
these sequences have influence on grayscale value of the water-
marked medical image. At watermark extraction, correlation
between these sequences and watermarked medical image is
performed. The resultant correlation values are less for small gain
factors which cause low quality extracted watermark images. As
the value of gain factor increases, the correlation values
also increases. Fig. 10 shows the extracted watermark images using
different gain factor k values. The corresponding PSNR and NC
values are tabulated in Table 1. The results show that when gain
factor is high, the quality of extracted watermark images is
also high.
The corresponding PSNR values and NC values of proposed
scheme are compared with existing scheme [18] and are tabulated
in Table 2. The comparison of schemes is performed using gain fac-
tor k as 2, and without application of any watermarking attacks.
The average value of PSNR of watermarked medical images of pro-
posed scheme is around 49.36 dB while the average value of PSNR
of watermarked medical images of existing scheme [18] is around
37.58 dB. Thus, it indicates that the watermarked image is not
much affected by embedding watermark bits. The proposed
scheme provides better imperceptibility compared to existing
scheme [18].
Note that the average value of NC of extracted watermark
images of proposed scheme is around 0.9618 while the average

Table 1
PSNR(dB) and NC Value of Proposed Scheme using Different Gain Factor k values.

Test Image PSNR (dB) NC

Watermark 1 Watermark 2 Watermark 3 Watermark 1 Watermark 2 Watermark 3
(a) For Gain Factor k = 2
X-ray 55.06 51.58 53.10 0.9230 0.9784 0.9408
US 50.27 49.62 50.13 0.9551 0.9411 0.9400
MRI 48.99 45.52 47.86 0.9692 0.9918 0.9765
CT 47.18 46.54 46.55 0.9827 0.9647 0.9780
(b) For Gain Factor k = 4
X-ray 45.01 43.81 45.06 0.9906 0.9850 0.9571
US 42.68 40.39 40.41 0.9809 0.9751 0.9722
MRI 39.36 40.49 39.79 0.9925 0.9902 0.9932
CT 38.86 38.26 38.69 0.9929 0.9872 0.9758
(c) For Gain Factor k = 6
X-ray 39.86 40.08 37.80 0.9928 0.9945 0.9795
US 35.06 33.83 36.89 0.9937 0.9912 0.9851
MRI 32.45 36.12 33.54 0.9998 0.9956 0.9995
CT 33.03 32.39 32.51 0.9919 0.9887 0.9860
(d) For Gain Factor k = 8
X-ray 34.21 34.77 33.73 0.9932 0.9945 0.9957
US 29.38 32.52 32.84 0.9976 0.9930 0.9871
MRI 31.21 32.55 30.40 0.9995 0.9995 1.0000
CT 35.51 28.37 28.98 0.9937 0.9933 0.9928

Table 2
Comparison of PSNR(dB) and NC Value of Proposed Scheme with Existing Scheme [18] without Application of Watermarking Attacks.

Test Image Proposed Scheme Existing Scheme [18]

Watermark 1 Watermark 2 Watermark 3 Watermark 1 Watermark 2 Watermark 3
(a) Comparison of PSNR (dB) Values
X-ray 55.06 51.58 53.10 39.40 36.72 34.07
US 50.27 49.62 50.13 40.60 37.92 35.28
MRI 48.99 45.52 47.86 40.61 37.92 35.28
CT 47.18 46.54 46.55 40.40 37.71 35.07
(b) Comparison of NC Values
X-ray 0.9230 0.9784 0.9408 0.6018 0.6667 0.7409
US 0.9551 0.9411 0.9400 0.5524 0.5822 0.6481
MRI 0.9692 0.9918 0.9765 0.5485 0.5818 0.6461
CT 0.9827 0.9647 0.9780 0.5705 0.6168 0.6844

Table 3
NC Value of Proposed Scheme and Existing Scheme [18] under JPEG Compression Attack.

Test image X-ray US MRI CT X-ray US MRI CT

JPEG Compression Attack Existing Scheme [18] Proposed Scheme
Q = 90 0.7374 0.6346 0.6272 0.6758 0.9713 0.9314 0.9806 0.9806
Q = 80 0.7209 0.6186 0.6086 0.6588 0.9282 0.6989 0.7364 0.9578
Q = 70 0.7146 0.6097 0.6026 0.6502 0.9525 0.7204 0.7114 0.7402
Q = 60 0.7102 0.6037 0.5862 0.6474 0.7551 0.6307 0.5889 0.7931
Q = 50 0.6933 0.6010 0.5884 0.6361 0.7125 0.6067 0.5945 0.6404
1376 R. Thanki et al. / Engineering Science and Technology, an International Journal 20 (2017) 1366–1379

Table 4
NC Value of Proposed Scheme and Existing Scheme [18] under Noise Addition Attack.

Test image X-ray US MRI CT X-ray US MRI CT

Noise Addition Attack Existing Scheme [18] Proposed Scheme
Speckle Noise (Variance = 0.004) 0.7168 0.6470 0.6383 0.6817 0.8713 0.9451 0.9456 0.9396
Salt & Pepper Noise (Variance = 0.005) 0.7054 0.6266 0.6183 0.6666 0.8730 0.8878 0.9002 0.9125
Gaussian Noise (Mean = 1, Variance = 0.001) 0.7129 0.6292 0.6228 0.6686 0.9322 0.8049 0.8135 0.8620

Existing Scheme [18] Proposed Scheme

Fig. 11. Watermarked Medical Images and Extracted Watermark Images under Speckle Noise Attack.

Table 5
NC Value of Proposed Scheme and Existing Scheme [18] under Filtering Attack.

Test image X-ray US MRI CT X-ray US MRI CT

Filtering Attack Existing Scheme [18] Proposed Scheme
Median Filtering (2
2) 0.7180 0.6157 0.6067 0.6517 0.9538 0.8943 0.9700 0.9607
Mean Filtering (2
2) 0.6794 0.5838 0.5782 0.6206 0.8688 0.8950 0.8461 0.8771
Gaussian LPF (2
2) 0.6794 0.5838 0.5782 0.6206 0.8657 0.8900 0.9458 0.9668

Table 6
NC Value of Proposed Scheme and Existing Scheme [18] under Blurring Attack, Sharpening Attack, and Histogram Equalization Attack.

Test image X-ray US MRI CT X-ray US MRI CT

Various Attacks Existing Scheme [18] Proposed Scheme
Blurring 0.5660 0.5271 0.5347 0.5510 0.6952 0.7385 0.9627 0.9078
Sharpening 0.7617 0.6638 0.6617 0.7124 0.9408 0.9661 0.9661 0.9674
Histogram Equalization 0.7480 0.7010 0.7468 0.7170 0.9689 0.9720 0.9629 0.9708

Existing Scheme [18] Proposed Scheme

Fig. 12. Watermarked Medical Images and Extracted Watermark Images under Histogram Equalization Attack.

value of NC of extracted watermark images of existing scheme [18]
is around 0.6201. Thus, it indicates that the extraction of water-
mark images in the proposed scheme is better than the existing
scheme [18].
4.3. Robustness test
For robustness test of proposed scheme, various watermarking
attacks such as JPEG compression, filtering such as median, mean,
and Gaussian low pass filter, cropping, blurring, sharpening, Gaus-
sian noise, salt & pepper noise, speckle noise and geometric attacks
such as rotation, cropping and flipping are applied on watermarked
medical images. At extraction side, if the extraction of watermark
image is possible from corrupted watermarked contents then the
scheme is robust, authentic and secure. In this paper, the robust-
ness of proposed scheme against various watermarking attacks is
measured by normalized correlation (NC). In addition, NC value
of proposed scheme is compared with NC value of the existing
scheme [18] for the same set of medical images. The NC value’s
obtained for various watermarking attacks for different water-
marked medical image (which is watermarked by WM 3 image)
are given below.
4.3.1. JPEG compression attack
JPEG compression compresses any image without much affect-
ing the visual information of the image. The JPEG compression with
 R. Thanki et al. / Engineering Science and Technology, an International Journal 20 (2017) 1366–1379 1377

different quality factors are applied on watermarked medical
images and then WM 3 image is extracted using proposed scheme.
In Table 3, the NC values for the compression attack of an image
like X-ray, US, MRI and CT are summarized. The results show that
the proposed scheme performed better than existing scheme [18]
under this attack.
4.3.2. Noise addition attack
The different noises such as Gaussian noise, salt & pepper noise,
and speckle noise are applied on the watermarked medical images
and then the watermark WM3 is extracted using proposed scheme.
In Table 4, the NC value for this attack for test images is summa-
rized. The results show that the proposed scheme performed better

Table 7
NC Value of Proposed Scheme and Existing Scheme [18] under Geometric Attack.

Test image X-ray US MRI CT X-ray US MRI CT

Various Attacks Existing Scheme [18] Proposed Scheme
Flipping 0.5056 0.4977 0.5040 0.5029 0.8691 0.8519 0.7258 0.8917
Rotation (90°) 0.4976 0.4968 0.5025 0.4996 0.7895 0.8510 0.9005 0.9448
Cropping (20%) 0.7298 0.6363 0.6371 0.6817 0.9704 0.9352 0.9687 0.9593

Table 8
Sample false positive test results for proposed method.

Extracted Extracted Extracted

watermark1 watermark2 watermark3
Non-watermarked
Sl. No using the NC1 using the NC2 using the NC3
Image
proposed proposed proposed
algorithm algorithm algorithm

1 0.5013 0.4884 0.4973

2 0.4981 0.5093 0.4943

3 0.4984 0.5297 0.5046

4 0.4987 0.5040 0.5004

5 0.4990 0.4963 0.5187

1378 R. Thanki et al. / Engineering Science and Technology, an International Journal 20 (2017) 1366–1379

Table 9
Performance Comparison of Proposed Scheme with Existing Schemes [3,18,25] for X-ray Medical image under Various Watermarking Attacks.

Attacks NC for Watermark Logo

Dey Scheme et al., 2013 [18] Singh Scheme et al., 2015 [25] Thakkar Scheme et al., 2016 [3] Proposed Scheme
JPEG Compression (Q = 90) 0.7374 0.7394 0.0543 0.9806
Sharpening 0.7617 0.7364 0.0737 0.9674
Median (2
2) 0.6794 0.6662 0.0252 0.9607
Gaussian LPF 0.6794 0.7102 0.0196 0.9668
Gaussian Noise (l = 0, r = 0.01) 0.6233 0.7394 0.0520 0.6377
Salt & Pepper Noise (l = 0.1) 0.5817 0.7072 0.0132 0.7532
Histogram Equalization 0.7480 0.7402 0.0264 0.9708

Table 10
Comparison of Proposed Scheme with Existing Schemes [3,18,25] with Various Features.

Features Dey Scheme Singh Scheme et al., Thakkar Scheme et al., 2016 [3] Proposed Algorithm
et al., 2013 [18] 2015 [25]
Type of Watermarking Robust Robust Robust Robust
No. of Image Processing Transforms 1 1 2 2
Used Transform for Watermark Discrete Wavelet Discrete Wavelet Discrete Wavelet Transform Discrete Fast Curvelet Transform
Embedding Transform Transform and Singular Value Decomposition and Discrete Cosine Transform
No. of Noise Sequences Three PN Sequences Two PN Sequences Not used Two WGN Sequences
Maximum PSNR (dB) 39.03 37.75 31.17 55.06
Maximum NC 0.7409 0.7544 0.6676 0.9998
Execution Time 108.92 s Not mentioned Not mentioned 29.95 s
False Positive Zero Non mentioned Zero Zero

than existing scheme [18] under this attack. Fig. 11 shows water-
marked CT image is corrupted by speckle noise and the corre-
sponding extracted watermarks of proposed and existing [18]
methods.
4.3.3. Filtering attack
Different filters like median filter mean filter and Gaussian low
pass filter are applied on the watermarked medical images and
then the WM3 image is extracted using proposed scheme. In
Table 5, the NC values for this attack are summarized. The results
show that the proposed scheme performed better than existing
scheme [18] under this attack.
4.3.4. Blurring attack, sharpening attack, and histogram equalization
attack
Another set of attacks: blurring, sharpening, and histogram
equalization are also applied on the watermarked medical images
and used for robustness test. In Table 6, the NC value for these
attacks for test images is summarized. The results show that the
proposed scheme is performed better than existing scheme [18]
under this attack. Fig. 12 shows watermarked CT image is cor-
rupted by Histogram Equalization and the corresponding extracted
watermarks of proposed and existing [18] methods.
4.3.5. Geometric attack
Different geometric attack: flipping, rotation, and cropping are
applied on the watermarked medical images and then the WM3
image is extracted using proposed scheme. In Table 7, the NC value
for this attack for test images is summarized. The results show that
the proposed scheme is performed better than existing scheme
[18] under all these kind of attacks.
4.4. False positive test
The results of this test are useful in evaluating the security
requirements of the proposed method. A false positive is a result
of extraction of a watermark from an unauthorized image, which
doesn’t actually belong to the owner. Since, false positives encour-
age malicious owners in claiming other unauthorized images, this
problem should be avoided. Given multiple non watermarked
medical images and a watermark, the proposed Watermark Extrac-
tion algorithm is applied on each one of them using the same
owner secret keys to extract the watermark from non-
watermarked images. The sample subjective and objective results
for 5 non watermarked images are shown in Table 8. A false posi-
tive is said to occur, if an extracted watermark shows a visual trace
of the owner’s watermark. The false positive rate decreases with
increased uniqueness of the selected features for watermarking.
A watermark which was shown in Fig 8 is used in all kinds of
simulations.
When testing on a large data set, by assuming that a false pos-
itive arises if the NC value of such extracted watermark is high
(exceeds 0.6); a false positive rate of zero is obtained for the pro-
posed method, when tested on 100 test medical images which
are available in the MedPixTM Medical Image Database [36]. Accord-
ing to I. J. Cox [37] ‘‘A false positive rate of 106 can meet the secu-
rity requirements” and hence our developed method can meet the
security requirements of watermarking.
4.5. Comparison of the proposed scheme with existing schemes
In Table 9, the performance of proposed scheme is compared
with some recently watermarking schemes developed for medical
image protection.
The proposed scheme performs well compared to three of the
existing scheme [3,18,25] against all type of watermarking attacks
except for Gaussian noise attack with mean (0) and variance (0.01).
The comparison of the schemes is performed by same medical
images which are used in proposed scheme. For better comparison
of schemes, same database is use.
The proposed scheme is also compared with the existing
schemes [3,18,25] by various features in Table 10. The watermark-
ing in the scheme [3] is performed in DWT + SVD domain and
schemes [18,25] is performed in DWT domain. The watermarking
in proposed scheme is performed in the FDCuT-DCT domain. While
two PN sequences are used in the scheme [25] and three PN
sequences are used in the scheme [18], the proposed scheme uses
two WGN sequences. The maximum PSNR value in the scheme [3]
 R. Thanki et al. / Engineering Science and Technology, an International Journal 20 (2017) 1366–1379
is 31.17 dB, [18] is 39.03 dB, [25] is 37.75 dB, and in proposed
scheme is 52.76 dB, respectively. The maximum NC value in the
scheme [3] is 0.6676, in the scheme [18] is 0.7409, in the scheme
[25] is 0.7544, and in the proposed scheme it is 0.9918. The average
results indicate that performance of the proposed scheme is better
than existing schemes in term of imperceptibility, robustness, and
security.
5. Conclusion
This paper proposed a new blind Fast Discrete Curvelet Trans-
form (FDCuT); Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) and White Gaus-
sian Noise sequences based medical image watermarking
technique. For blind extraction of watermark data, mid band fre-
quency DCT coefficients of HF curvelet subband of the medical
image is modified by two WGN sequences in such a way that blind
extraction of watermark bit is possible at detector side. The pro-
posed scheme is tested for various medical images such as X-ray,
US, MRI, and CT and compared with the performance of existing
scheme [18]. It is found that proposed scheme performed better
than existing schemes [3,18,25] in terms of imperceptibility,
robustness, and security. The average PSNR value is above 45 dB,
and NC value is above 0.94 for all types of watermarked medical
image in the proposed scheme. This scheme may be used for med-
ical image protection in telemedicine application. The limitation of
this proposed scheme is that noise is always present in the
extracted watermark image. Further the method can embed only
binary watermarks, and is unable to embed EPR data which is in
text format.
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