Reversible Region of Non-Interest (RONI) Watermarking for Authentication of DICOM Images

TL;DR

This paper presents a reversible watermarking scheme for DICOM images that embeds a SHA-256 hash in the RONI to verify integrity and recover the original image, enhancing medical image authentication.

Contribution

It introduces a reversible watermarking method using RONI for DICOM images that allows both authentication and perfect image recovery.

Findings

The scheme successfully recovers original images without distortion.

It accurately verifies image integrity using SHA-256 comparison.

The method is applicable to ultrasound images in experiments.

Abstract

This paper introduces current watermarking techniques available from the literatures. Requirements for medical watermarking will be discussed. We then propose a watermarking scheme that can recover the original image from the watermarked one. The purpose is to verify the integrity and authenticity of DICOM images. We used ultrasound (US) images in our experiment. SHA-256 of the whole image is embedded in the least significant bits of the RONI (Region of Non-Interest). If the image has not been altered, the watermark will be extracted and the original image will be recovered. SHA-256 of the recovered image will be compared with the extracted watermark for authentication.