Mixed reversible and RONI watermarking for medical image reliability protection.

By attaching image authenticity and integrity proofs directly at the pixels level of an image, watermarking can help to raise up medical image protection. However, because of the induced distortions, specific schemes like lossless data hiding or watermarking Regions of Non Interest (RONI) have been proposed to guarantee the preservation of the image interpretation. In this article, we propose an image reliability protection mechanism which combines advantages of both lossless and RONI approaches in order to provide a better and continuous protection. The proposed system was applied to magnetic resonance images of the head. Experimental results illustrate the overall functionality of the system.