A novel Watermarking Technique Based on Hybrid Transforms

This paper proposed Anovel watermarking scheme using hybrid of  Dual Tree Complex Wavelet Transform and singular value decomposition . Image watermarking is to embed copyright data in image bit streams. Our proposed technique demonestrates  the effective and robust of image watermarking algorithms using a hybrid of two strong mathematical transforms; the 2-level Dual Tree Complex Wavelet Transform (DT-CWT) and Singular Value Decomposition (SVD). This technique shows high level of security and robustness against attacks. The algorithm was tested for imperceptibility and robustness and the results were compared with DWT-SVD-based technique, it is shown that the proposed watermarking schemes is considerably more robust and effective

Blind Wavelet-Based Image Watermarking

In this chapter, the watermarking technique is blind; blind watermarking does not need any of the original images or any information about it to recover watermark. In this technique the watermark is inserted into the high frequencies. Three-level wavelet transform is applied to the image, and the size of the watermark is equal to the size of the detailed sub-band. Significant coefficients are used to embed the watermark. The proposed technique depends on quantization. The proposed watermarking technique generates images with less degradation

Impact of opioid-free analgesia on pain severity and patient satisfaction after discharge from surgery: multispecialty, prospective cohort study in 25 countries

Background: Balancing opioid stewardship and the need for adequate analgesia following discharge after surgery is challenging. This study aimed to compare the outcomes for patients discharged with opioid versus opioid-free analgesia after common surgical procedures.Methods: This international, multicentre, prospective cohort study collected data from patients undergoing common acute and elective general surgical, urological, gynaecological, and orthopaedic procedures. The primary outcomes were patient-reported time in severe pain measured on a numerical analogue scale from 0 to 100% and patient-reported satisfaction with pain relief during the first week following discharge. Data were collected by in-hospital chart review and patient telephone interview 1 week after discharge.Results: The study recruited 4273 patients from 144 centres in 25 countries; 1311 patients (30.7%) were prescribed opioid analgesia at discharge. Patients reported being in severe pain for 10 (i.q.r. 1-30)% of the first week after discharge and rated satisfaction with analgesia as 90 (i.q.r. 80-100) of 100. After adjustment for confounders, opioid analgesia on discharge was independently associated with increased pain severity (risk ratio 1.52, 95% c.i. 1.31 to 1.76; P < 0.001) and re-presentation to healthcare providers owing to side-effects of medication (OR 2.38, 95% c.i. 1.36 to 4.17; P = 0.004), but not with satisfaction with analgesia (beta coefficient 0.92, 95% c.i. -1.52 to 3.36; P = 0.468) compared with opioid-free analgesia. Although opioid prescribing varied greatly between high-income and low- and middle-income countries, patient-reported outcomes did not.Conclusion: Opioid analgesia prescription on surgical discharge is associated with a higher risk of re-presentation owing to side-effects of medication and increased patient-reported pain, but not with changes in patient-reported satisfaction. Opioid-free discharge analgesia should be adopted routinely

A Multilayered Audio Signal Encryption Approach for Secure Voice Communication

In this paper, multilayer cryptosystems for encrypting audio communications are proposed. These cryptosystems combine audio signals with other active concealing signals, such as speech signals, by continuously fusing the audio signal with a speech signal without silent periods. The goal of these cryptosystems is to prevent unauthorized parties from listening to encrypted audio communications. Preprocessing is performed on both the speech signal and the audio signal before they are combined, as this is necessary to get the signals ready for fusion. Instead of encoding and decoding methods, the cryptosystems rely on the values of audio samples, which allows for saving time while increasing their resistance to hackers and environments with a noisy background. The main feature of the proposed approach is to consider three levels of encryption namely fusion, substitution, and permutation where various combinations are considered. The resulting cryptosystems are compared to the one-dimensional logistic map-based encryption techniques and other state-of-the-art methods. The performance of the suggested cryptosystems is evaluated by the use of the histogram, structural similarity index, signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), log-likelihood ratio, spectrum distortion, and correlation coefficient in simulated testing. A comparative analysis in relation to the encryption of logistic maps is given. This research demonstrates that increasing the level of encryption results in increased security. It is obvious that the proposed salting-based encryption method and the multilayer DCT/DST cryptosystem offer better levels of security as they attain the lowest SNR values, −25 dB and −2.5 dB, respectively. In terms of the used evaluation metrics, the proposed multilayer cryptosystem achieved the best results in discrete cosine transform and discrete sine transform, demonstrating a very promising performance

A Multilayered Audio Signal Encryption Approach for Secure Voice Communication

In this paper, multilayer cryptosystems for encrypting audio communications are proposed. These cryptosystems combine audio signals with other active concealing signals, such as speech signals, by continuously fusing the audio signal with a speech signal without silent periods. The goal of these cryptosystems is to prevent unauthorized parties from listening to encrypted audio communications. Preprocessing is performed on both the speech signal and the audio signal before they are combined, as this is necessary to get the signals ready for fusion. Instead of encoding and decoding methods, the cryptosystems rely on the values of audio samples, which allows for saving time while increasing their resistance to hackers and environments with a noisy background. The main feature of the proposed approach is to consider three levels of encryption namely fusion, substitution, and permutation where various combinations are considered. The resulting cryptosystems are compared to the one-dimensional logistic map-based encryption techniques and other state-of-the-art methods. The performance of the suggested cryptosystems is evaluated by the use of the histogram, structural similarity index, signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), log-likelihood ratio, spectrum distortion, and correlation coefficient in simulated testing. A comparative analysis in relation to the encryption of logistic maps is given. This research demonstrates that increasing the level of encryption results in increased security. It is obvious that the proposed salting-based encryption method and the multilayer DCT/DST cryptosystem offer better levels of security as they attain the lowest SNR values, −25 dB and −2.5 dB, respectively. In terms of the used evaluation metrics, the proposed multilayer cryptosystem achieved the best results in discrete cosine transform and discrete sine transform, demonstrating a very promising performance

Securing Color Video When Transmitting through Communication Channels Using DT-CWT-Based Watermarking

In this paper, a color video watermarking system based on SVD in the complex wavelet domain is proposed. The process of inserting copyright information in video bit streams is known as video watermarking. It has been advocated in recent years as a solution to the problem of unlawful digital video alteration and dissemination. An effective, robust, and invisible video watermarking algorithm is proposed in this paper. The two-level dual tree complex wavelet transform (DT-CWT) and singular value decomposition are used to create this approach, which was built on a cascade of two powerful mathematical transforms. This hybrid technique demonstrates a high level of security as well as various levels of attack robustness. The proposed algorithm was used to the test for imperceptibility and robustness, and this resulted in excellent grades. We compared our suggested method to a DWT-SVD-based technique and found it to be far more reliable and effective

Signing and Verifying Encrypted Medical Images Using Double Random Phase Encryption

Digital Signature using Self-Image signing is introduced in this paper. This technique is used to verify the integrity and originality of images transmitted over insecure channels. In order to protect the user’s medical images from changing or modifying, the images must be signed. The proposed approach uses the Discrete Wavelet Transform to subdivide a picture into four bands and the Discrete Cosine Transform DCT is used to embed a mark from each sub-band to another sub-band of DWT according to a determined algorithm. To increase the security, the marked image is then encrypted using Double Random Phase Encryption before transmission over the communication channel. By verifying the presence of the mark, the authority of the sender is verified at the receiver. Authorized users’ scores should, in theory, always be higher than illegal users’ scores. If this is the case, a single threshold might be used to distinguish between authorized and unauthorized users by separating the two sets of scores. The results are compared to those obtained using an approach that does not employ DWT

Novel Hybrid Fusion-Based Technique for Securing Medical Images

The security of images has gained great interest in modern communication systems. This is due to the massive critical applications that are based on images. Medical imaging is at the top of these applications. However, the rising number of heterogenous attacks push toward the development of securing algorithms and methods for imaging systems. To this end, this work considers developing a novel authentication, intellectual property protection, ownership, and security technique for imaging systems, mainly for medical imaging. The developed algorithm includes two security modules for safeguarding various picture kinds. The first unit is accomplished by applying watermarking authentication in the frequency domain. The singular value decomposition (SVD) is performed for the host image’s discrete cosine transform (DCT) coefficients. The singular values (S) are divided into 64 × 64 non-overlapping blocks, followed by embedding the watermark in each block to be robust to any attack. The second unit is made up of two encryption layers to provide double-layer security to the watermarked image. The double random phase encryption (DRPE) and chaotic encryption have been tested and examined in the encryption unit. The suggested approach is resistant to common image processing attacks, including rotation, cropping, and adding Gaussian noise, according to the findings of the experiments. The encryption of watermarked images in the spatial and DCT domains and fused watermarked images in the DCT domain are all discussed. The transparency and security of the method are assessed using various measurements. The proposed approach achieves high-quality reconstructed watermarks and high security by using encryption to images and achieves robustness against any obstructive attacks. The developed hybrid algorithm recovers the watermark even in the presence of an attack with a correlation near 0.8

Response Surface Methodology for Optimization of Buspirone Hydrochloride-Loaded In Situ Gel for Pediatric Anxiety

The purpose of the current investigation was to formulate, assess, and optimize oral in situ gels of buspirone hydrochloride (BH) with the specific end goal of expanding the time the medication spends in the stomach, thereby ensuring an extended medication discharge. This would allow the use of a once-a-day dose of liquid BH formulations, which is ideal for the treatment of pediatric anxiety. In situ gels loaded with BH were prepared using various concentrations of sodium alginate (Na alg.), calcium chloride (CaCl2), and hydroxypropyl methylcellulose (HPMC K15M). The in situ gels exhibited the desired consistency, drug distribution, pH, ability to form gel, and prolonged drug release in vitro. The (33) full factorial design was utilized for the revealing of the ideal figures for the selected independent variables, Na alg. (X1), HPMC (X2), and CaCl2 (X3) based on measurements of the viscosity (Y1) and percentage drug release after 6 h (Y2). A pharmacokinetic study of the optimum formulation on rabbits was also performed. The formulation containing 2% of Na alg., 0.9% of HPMC-K15M, and 0.1125% of CaCl2 was selected as the ideal formulation, which gave the theoretical values of 269.2 cP and 44.9% for viscosity and percentage of drug released after 6 h, respectively. The pharmacokinetic study showed that the selected oral Na alg. in situ gel formulation displayed a prolonged release effect compared to BH solution and the marketed tablet (Buspar®), which was confirmed by the low Cmax and high Tmax values. The optimum oral Na alg. in situ gel showed a 1.5-fold increment in bioavailability compared with the drug solution

Official Statistics and Big Data Processing with Artificial Intelligence: Capacity Indicators for Public Sector Organizations

Efficient monitoring and achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) has increased the need for a variety of data and statistics. The massive increase in data gathering through social networks, traditional business systems, and Internet of Things (IoT)-based sensor devices raises real questions regarding the capacity of national statistical systems (NSS) for utilizing big data sources. Further, in this current era, big data is captured through sensor-based systems in public sector organizations. To gauge the capacity of public sector institutions in this regard, this work provides an indicator to monitor the processing capacity of the public sector organizations within the country (Pakistan). Some of the indicators related to measuring the capacity of the NSS were captured through a census-based survey. At the same time, convex logistic principal component analysis was used to develop scores and relative capacity indicators. The findings show that most organizations hesitate to disseminate data due to concerns about data privacy and that public sector organizations’ IT personnel are unable to deal with big data sources to generate official statistics. Artificial intelligence (AI) techniques can be used to overcome these challenges, such as automating data processing, improving data privacy and security, and enhancing the capabilities of IT human resources. This research helps to design capacity-building initiatives for public sector organizations in weak dimensions, focusing on leveraging AI to enhance the production of quality and reliable statistics