Using digital watermarking to enhance security in wireless medical image transmission

This is the published version of the article. Copyright 2010 Mary Ann Liebert Inc.During the last few years, wireless networks have been increasingly used both inside hospitals and in patients’ homes to transmit medical information. In general, wireless networks suffer from decreased security. However, digital watermarking can be used to secure medical information. In this study, we focused on combining wireless transmission and digital watermarking technologies to better secure the transmission of medical images within and outside the hospital. Methods: We utilized an integrated system comprising the wireless network and the digital watermarking module to conduct a series of tests. Results: The test results were evaluated by medical consultants. They concluded that the images suffered no visible quality degradation and maintained their diagnostic integrity. Discussion: The proposed integrated system presented reasonable stability, and its performance was comparable to that of a fixed network. This system can enhance security during the transmission of medical images through a wireless channel.The General Secretariat for Research and Technology of the Hellenic Ministry of Development and the British Council

Application of texture analysis to muscle MRI: 1-What kind of information should be expected from texture analysis?

Several previous clinical or preclinical studies using computerized texture analysis of MR Images have demonstrated much more clinical discrimination than visual image analysis by the radiologist. In muscular dystrophy, a discriminating power has been already demonstrated with various methods of texture analysis of magnetic resonance images (MRI-TA). Unfortunately, a scale gap exists between the spatial resolutions of histological and MR images making a direct correlation impossible. Furthermore, the effect of the various histological modifications on the gray level of each pixel is complex and cannot be easily analyzed. Consequently, clinicians will not accept the use of MRI-TA in routine practice if TA remains a “black box” without clinical correspondence at a tissue level. A goal therefore of the multicenter European COST action MYO-MRI is to optimize MRI-TA methods in muscular dystrophy and to elucidate the histological meaning of MRI textures.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Digital image watermarking: its formal model, fundamental properties and possible attacks

While formal definitions and security proofs are well established in some fields like cryptography and steganography, they are not as evident in digital watermarking research. A systematic development of watermarking schemes is desirable, but at present their development is usually informal, ad hoc, and omits the complete realization of application scenarios. This practice not only hinders the choice and use of a suitable scheme for a watermarking application, but also leads to debate about the state-of-the-art for different watermarking applications. With a view to the systematic development of watermarking schemes, we present a formal generic model for digital image watermarking. Considering possible inputs, outputs, and component functions, the initial construction of a basic watermarking model is developed further to incorporate the use of keys. On the basis of our proposed model, fundamental watermarking properties are defined and their importance exemplified for different image applications. We also define a set of possible attacks using our model showing different winning scenarios depending on the adversary capabilities. It is envisaged that with a proper consideration of watermarking properties and adversary actions in different image applications, use of the proposed model would allow a unified treatment of all practically meaningful variants of watermarking schemes

Smart Sensors and Virtual Physiology Human Approach as a Basis of Personalized Therapies in Diabetes Mellitus

Diabetes mellitus (DM) has a growing incidence and prevalence in modern societies, pushed by the aging and change of life styles. Despite the huge resources dedicated to improve their quality of life, mortality and morbidity rates, these are still very poor. In this work, DM pathology is revised from clinical and metabolic points of view, as well as mathematical models related to DM, with the aim of justifying an evolution of DM therapies towards the correction of the physiological metabolic loops involved. We analyze the reliability of mathematical models, under the perspective of virtual physiological human (VPH) initiatives, for generating and integrating customized knowledge about patients, which is needed for that evolution. Wearable smart sensors play a key role in this frame, as they provide patient’s information to the models

A first proposal for secure data storage into DNA molecules compliant with biological constraints

International audienceenvisioned in 2025. To respond to associated storage needs, technologies as flash memoryand hard drives reach their limits in terms of: density; energy and ecological costs; durabilityfor long term storage. In this context, data storage on DNA molecules has recently been shownas very promising. DNA storage could be 106 times more dense than hard drives, with alifetime 10 to 20 times longer and an energy consumption closed to zero (molecules can bekept at room temperature with no maintenance).In this work, we are interested in securing archived data. DNA storage being a new technology,the opportunity presents itself to integrate this critical aspect at the biological level, contrarilyto what has been done for electronical storage means. In fact, information must be securedat every step of the DNA data storage chain. Data integrity and confidentiality are among themain issues with threats like data modification (e.g. writing of new data) or the theft of theDNA storage support by an attacker. Herein, we propose a solution for writing encrypted dataonto synthetic DNA molecules considering DNA synthesis and the error-correction codeconstraints. Indeed, DNA sequences should conform to structural constraints dictated by thisbiological process and sequencing

Relevance of Watermarking in Medical Imaging

Because of the importance of the security issues in the management of medical information, we suggest to use watermarking techniques to complete the existing measures for protecting medical images. We discuss the necessary requirements for such a system to beacceptedbymedical staff and its complementary role with respect with existing security systems. We present different scenarios, one devoted to the authentication and tracing of the images, the second to the integrity control of the patient's record

An additive and lossless watermarking method based on invariant image approximation and haar wavelet transform

International audienceIn this article, we propose a new additive lossless watermarking scheme which identifies parts of the image that can be reversibly watermarked and conducts message embedding in the conventional Haar wavelet transform coefficients. Our approach makes use of an approximation of the image signal that is invariant to the watermark addition for classifying the image in order to avoid over/underflows. The method has been tested on different sets of medical images and some usual natural test images as Lena. Experimental result analysis conducted with respect to several aspects including data hiding capacity and image quality preservation, shows that our method is one of the most competitive existing lossless watermarking schemes in terms of high capacity and low distortion

Analyse et décision en électromyographie

Une description de la chaîne diagnostique mise en oeuvre pour le traitement des informations neurologiques, en particulier le signal électromyographique (EMG), est proposée à travers une synthèse des derniers travaux réalisés. L'accent est mis sur l'intégration des méthodes de représentation, d'analyse statistique et de techniques d'interprétation. Ces dernières peuvent intervenir dans la modélisation et la conduite du processus global de résolution en s'appuyant sur des connaissances symboliques. Elles peuvent aussi faciliter les étapes bas niveau d'identification des signaux élémentaires et de leurs mélanges

Landmark Localization for Cephalometric Analysis using Multiscale Image Patch-based Graph Convolutional Networks

International audienceAccurate and robust cephalometric image analysis plays an essential role in orthodontic diagnosis, treatment assessment and surgical planning. This paper proposes a novel landmark localization method for cephalometric analysis using multiscale image patch-based graph convolutional networks. In detail, image patches with the same size are hierarchically sampled from the Gaussian pyramid to well preserve multiscale context information. We combine local appearance and shape information into spatialized features with an attention module to enrich node representations in graph. The spatial relationships of landmarks are built with the incorporation of three-layer graph convolutional networks, and multiple landmarks are simultaneously updated and moved toward the targets in a cascaded coarse-to-fine process. Quantitative results obtained on publicly available cephalometric X-ray images have exhibited superior performance compared with other state-of-the-art methods in terms of mean radial error and successful detection rate within various precision ranges. Our approach performs significantly better especially in the clinically accepted range of 2 mm and this makes it suitable in cephalometric analysis and orthognathic surgery