Using digital watermarking to enhance security in wireless medical image transmission.

OBJECTIVES: 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.

Multiple image watermarking applied to health information management.

Information technology advances have brought forth new challenges in healthcare information management, due to the vast amount of medical data that needs to be efficiently stored, retrieved, and distributed, and the increased security threats that explicitly have to be addressed. The paper discusses the perspectives of digital watermarking in a range of medical data management and distribution issues, and proposes a complementary and/or alternative tool that simultaneously addresses medical data protection, archiving, and retrieval, as well as source and data authentication. The scheme imperceptibly embeds in medical images multiple watermarks conveying patient's personal and examination data, keywords for information retrieval, the physician's digital signature for authentication, and a reference message for data integrity control. Experimental results indicate the efficiency and transparency of the scheme, which conforms to the strict requirements that apply to regions of diagnostic significance.

Watermarking SDK implementation to facilitate integration in a secure healthcare environment.

The implementation of digital watermarking technology in healthcare applications is still in its infancy; however, the benefits of exploring this technology towards secure and efficient health data management are steadily propagated and realized by the research community. The paper presents the architecture of a watermarking software development kit (SDK), which provides multiple watermarking functionality and can be customized according to the targeted medical application, in order to address security of sensitive data, origin and data authentication, image archiving and retrieval. Two use cases of the proposed watermarking SDK are presented, the one involving access to the watermarking engine through a user interface, and the other referring to the case that the engine is embedded into the image acquisition device. The nature of the embeddable information that is applicable in each use case is also described.

Digital watermarking in telemedicine applications--towards enhanced data security and accessibility.

Implementing telemedical solutions has become a trend amongst the various research teams at an international level. Yet, contemporary information access and distribution technologies raise critical issues that urgently need to be addressed, especially those related to security. The paper suggests the use of watermarking in telemedical applications in order to enhance security of the transmitted sensitive medical data, familiarizes the users with a telemedical system and a watermarking module that have already been developed, and proposes an architecture that will enable the integration of the two systems, taking into account a variety of use cases and application scenarios.