A Novel Dual Watermarking Scheme Based On K-level For Medical Images

The security and integrity of medical images are critical due to the sensitive nature of the information they contain. Digital watermarking is a process of embedding information into images without significantly altering their appearance. Traditional watermarking methods, while effective to some extent, often face challenges in maintaining robustness and imperceptibility under various attacks and manipulations. This paper proposes a new dual watermarking scheme for medical images using a combination of spatial and frequency domains based on the k-level clustering algorithm. This scheme utilizes a k-level algorithm to generate a binary watermark image. The binary watermark is then embedded using the LSB technique. Subsequently, the original watermark also is embedded into the medical image using the DCT transform. Additionally, a bitwise XOR operation is employed to detect any manipulations by comparing it with the originally embedded binary image. PSNR is used to evaluate the efficacy of the scheme under various attacks. The analyses and results demonstrate that the scheme is robust against various attacks and effectively detects image manipulations.