Robust watermarking for magnetic resonance images with automatic region of interest detection

Medical image watermarking requires special considerations compared to ordinary watermarking methods. The first issue is the detection of an important area of the image called the Region of Interest (ROI) prior to starting the watermarking process. Most existing ROI detection procedures use manual-based methods, while in automated methods the robustness against intentional or unintentional attacks has not been considered extensively. The second issue is the robustness of the embedded watermark against different attacks. A common drawback of existing watermarking methods is their weakness against salt and pepper noise. The research carried out in this thesis addresses these issues of having automatic ROI detection for magnetic resonance images that are robust against attacks particularly the salt and pepper noise and designing a new watermarking method that can withstand high density salt and pepper noise. In the ROI detection part, combinations of several algorithms such as morphological reconstruction, adaptive thresholding and labelling are utilized. The noise-filtering algorithm and window size correction block are then introduced for further enhancement. The performance of the proposed ROI detection is evaluated by computing the Comparative Accuracy (CA). In the watermarking part, a combination of spatial method, channel coding and noise filtering schemes are used to increase the robustness against salt and pepper noise. The quality of watermarked image is evaluated using Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratio (PSNR) and Structural Similarity Index (SSIM), and the accuracy of the extracted watermark is assessed in terms of Bit Error Rate (BER). Based on experiments, the CA under eight different attacks (speckle noise, average filter, median filter, Wiener filter, Gaussian filter, sharpening filter, motion, and salt and pepper noise) is between 97.8% and 100%. The CA under different densities of salt and pepper noise (10%-90%) is in the range of 75.13% to 98.99%. In the watermarking part, the performance of the proposed method under different densities of salt and pepper noise measured by total PSNR, ROI PSNR, total SSIM and ROI SSIM has improved in the ranges of 3.48-23.03 (dB), 3.5-23.05 (dB), 0-0.4620 and 0-0.5335 to 21.75-42.08 (dB), 20.55-40.83 (dB), 0.5775-0.8874 and 0.4104-0.9742 respectively. In addition, the BER is reduced to the range of 0.02% to 41.7%. To conclude, the proposed method has managed to significantly improve the performance of existing medical image watermarking methods

Exploratory study to explore the role of ICT in the process of knowledge management in an Indian business environment

In the 21st century and the emergence of a digital economy, knowledge and the knowledge base economy are rapidly growing. To effectively be able to understand the processes involved in the creating, managing and sharing of knowledge management in the business environment is critical to the success of an organization. This study builds on the previous research of the authors on the enablers of knowledge management by identifying the relationship between the enablers of knowledge management and the role played by information communication technologies (ICT) and ICT infrastructure in a business setting. This paper provides the findings of a survey collected from the four major Indian cities (Chennai, Coimbatore, Madurai and Villupuram) regarding their views and opinions about the enablers of knowledge management in business setting. A total of 80 organizations participated in the study with 100 participants in each city. The results show that ICT and ICT infrastructure can play a critical role in the creating, managing and sharing of knowledge in an Indian business environment

Efficiency of LSB steganography on medical information

The development of the medical field had led to the transformation of communication from paper information into the digital form. Medical information security had become a great concern as the medical field is moving towards the digital world and hence patient information, disease diagnosis and so on are all being stored in the digital image. Therefore, to improve the medical information security, securing of patient information and the increasing requirements for communication to be transferred between patients, client, medical practitioners, and sponsors is essential to be secured. The core aim of this research is to make available a complete knowledge about the research trends on LSB Steganography Technique, which are applied to securing medical information such as text, image, audio, video and graphics and also discuss the efficiency of the LSB technique. The survey findings show that LSB steganography technique is efficient in securing medical information from intruder

Open research issues on multi-models for complex technological systems

Abstract -We are going to report here about state of the art works on multi-models for complex technological systems both from the theoretical and practical point of view. A variety of algorithmic approaches (k-mean, dss, etc.) and applicative domains (wind farms, neurological diseases, etc.) are reported to illustrate the extension of the research area

A Study of Data Security on E-Governance using Steganographic Optimization Algorithms

Steganography has been used massively in numerous fields to maintain the privacy and integrity of messages transferred via the internet. The need to secure the information has augmented with the increase in e-governance usage. The wide adoption of e-governance services also opens the doors to cybercriminals for fraudulent activities in cyberspace. To deal with these cybercrimes we need optimized and advanced steganographic techniques. Various advanced optimization techniques can be applied to steganography to obtain better results for the security of information. Various optimization techniques like particle swarm optimization and genetic algorithms with cryptography can be used to protect information for e-governance services. In this study, a comprehensive review of steganographic algorithms using optimization techniques is presented. A new perspective on using this technique to protect the information for e-governance is also presented. Deep Learning might be the area that can be used to automate the steganography process in combination with other method

Recent Advances in Steganography

Steganography is the art and science of communicating which hides the existence of the communication. Steganographic technologies are an important part of the future of Internet security and privacy on open systems such as the Internet. This book's focus is on a relatively new field of study in Steganography and it takes a look at this technology by introducing the readers various concepts of Steganography and Steganalysis. The book has a brief history of steganography and it surveys steganalysis methods considering their modeling techniques. Some new steganography techniques for hiding secret data in images are presented. Furthermore, steganography in speeches is reviewed, and a new approach for hiding data in speeches is introduced

Adaptive digital watermarking scheme based on support vector machines and optimized genetic algorithm

Digital watermarking is an effective solution to the problem of copyright protection, thus maintaining the security of digital products in the network. An improved scheme to increase the robustness of embedded information on the basis of discrete cosine transform (DCT) domain is proposed in this study. The embedding process consisted of two main procedures. Firstly, the embedding intensity with support vector machines (SVMs) was adaptively strengthened by training 1600 image blocks which are of different texture and luminance. Secondly, the embedding position with the optimized genetic algorithm (GA) was selected. To optimize GA, the best individual in the first place of each generation directly went into the next generation, and the best individual in the second position participated in the crossover and the mutation process. The transparency reaches 40.5 when GA’s generation number is 200. A case study was conducted on a 256 × 256 standard Lena image with the proposed method. After various attacks (such as cropping, JPEG compression, Gaussian low-pass filtering (3, 0. 5), histogram equalization, and contrast increasing (0.5, 0.6)) on the watermarked image, the extracted watermark was compared with the original one. Results demonstrate that the watermark can be effectively recovered after these attacks. Even though the algorithm is weak against rotation attacks, it provides high quality in imperceptibility and robustness and hence it is a successful candidate for implementing novel image watermarking scheme meeting real timelines

A Blind Adaptive Color Image Watermarking Scheme Based on Principal Component Analysis, Singular Value Decomposition and Human Visual System

A blind adaptive color image watermarking scheme based on principal component analysis, singular value decomposition, and human visual system is proposed. The use of principal component analysis to decorrelate the three color channels of host image, improves the perceptual quality of watermarked image. Whereas, human visual system and fuzzy inference system helped to improve both imperceptibility and robustness by selecting adaptive scaling factor, so that, areas more prone to noise can be added with more information as compared to less prone areas. To achieve security, location of watermark embedding is kept secret and used as key at the time of watermark extraction, whereas, for capacity both singular values and vectors are involved in watermark embedding process. As a result, four contradictory requirements; imperceptibility, robustness, security and capacity are achieved as suggested by results. Both subjective and objective methods are acquired to examine the performance of proposed schemes. For subjective analysis the watermarked images and watermarks extracted from attacked watermarked images are shown. For objective analysis of proposed scheme in terms of imperceptibility, peak signal to noise ratio, structural similarity index, visual information fidelity and normalized color difference are used. Whereas, for objective analysis in terms of robustness, normalized correlation, bit error rate, normalized hamming distance and global authentication rate are used. Security is checked by using different keys to extract the watermark. The proposed schemes are compared with state-of-the-art watermarking techniques and found better performance as suggested by results