Reversible Watermarking Using Hyperchaotic System for Secure Image Transmission

Abstract

In telemedicine applications, the images pertaining to medicines and diseases can undergo tampering and forging, where it increases risk in diagnosis. The reversible watermarking technique is capable to extract the embedded information and retrieve the original images completely from watermarked images. It has some specific features like lower distortion of images and high capacity of payload. To solve such an issue, a reversible watermarking method is proposed to provide security for the medical images using hyperchaotic with Deoxyribonucleic Acid (DNA) sequence. The proposed reversible watermarking method utilized standard images (lena, Barbara, boat and medical images) for encryption and decryption. Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT) and Inverse Discrete Wavelet Transform (IDWT) are used to compress the cover images and to decompress the stego images. Further, the thresholding with morphological transform is employed for segmentation of Region of Interest (RoI) in secret images. In addition, the encryption and decryption of secret image is done by hyperchaotic system with DNA sequence. Lastly, the embedding and extraction of secret images and cover images from the stego images is performed by reversible watermarking with differential expansion and modulus function. Simulation result shows that the proposed reversible watermarking method achieved Peak Signal to Noise Ratio (PSNR) of 99 dB for secret image construction, which is better compared to other traditional watermarking techniques.