Advances in medical image watermarking: a state of the art review

Watermarking has been considered to be a potent and persuasive gizmo for its application in healthcare setups that work online, especially in the current COVID-19 scenario. The security and protection of medical image data from various manipulations that take place over the internet is a topic of concern that needs to be addressed. A detailed review of security and privacy protection using watermarking has been presented in this paper. Watermarking of medical images helps in the protection of image content, authentication of Electronic Patient Record (EPR), and integrity verification. At first, we discuss the various prerequisites of medical image watermarking systems, followed by the classification of Medical Image Watermarking Techniques (MIWT) that include state-of-the-art. We have classified MIWT’s into four broader classes for providing better understanding of medical image watermarking. The existing schemes have been presented along with their cons so that the reader may be able to grasp the shortcomings of the technique in order to develop novel techniques proving the inevitability of the presented review. Further, various evaluation parameters along with potential challenges pertaining to medical image watermarking systems have been discussed to provide a deep insight into this research area.