Reversible Data Hiding for DICOM Image Using Lifting and Companding

In this work, a reversible watermarking technique is proposed for DICOM (Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine) image that offers high embedding capacity (payload), security and fidelity of the watermarked image. The goal is achieved by embedding watermark based on companding in lifting based discrete wavelet transform (DWT) domain. In the embedding process, the companding technique is used to increase the data hiding capacity. On the other hand, a simple linear function is used in companding to make the scheme easy to implement, and content dependant watermark is used to make the scheme robust to collusion operation. Moreover, unlike previously proposed reversible watermarking techniques, this novel approach does not embed the location map in the host image that ultimately helps to achieve high fidelity of the watermarked image. The advantage of the proposed scheme is demonstrated by simulation results and also compared with selected other related schemes.