Lossless Watermarking for Data Security and Integrity of Medical Images

无损水印确保医学图像的数据安全性和完整性

• 批准号: 7480204
• 负责人: QIANG WU
• 金额: $ 33.47万
• 依托单位: SOFT IMAGING, LLC
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 财政年份: 2004
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2004-07-01 至 2011-07-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/7480204
• 关键词: Accession Number; Address; Adoption; Agreement; Algorithms; Archives; Area; Back; Cancer Center; Case Study; Clinical; Clinical Research; Code; Color; Communication; Communities; Computer software; Computers; Copyright; Cytogenetics; Data; Data Security; Data Set; Detection; Development; Diagnostic; Diagnostic Imaging; Disclosure; Emerging Technologies; Environment; Feedback; Film; Future; Generations; Goals; Growth; Hand; Health; Health Care Costs; Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act; Healthcare; Housing; Image; Image Analysis; In Vitro; Industry; Information Protection; Institution; Internet; Iris; Knowledge; Legal patent; Licensing; Magnetic Resonance Imaging; Manufacturer Name; Marketing; Medical; Medical Imaging; Medical Records; Medical Technology; Methodology; Methods; Microscopic; Modality; Music; Operative Surgical Procedures; PET/CT scan; Parents; Pathology; Patients; Performance; Phase; Physicians; Plug-in; Policies; Process; Publishing; Purpose; Qualifying; Radiology Specialty; Range; Recording of previous events; Records; Recovery; Relative (related person); Reporting; Research; Research Personnel; Sampling; Scheme; Secure; Security; Solutions; Source; Standardization; Standards of Weights and Measures; System; Techniques; Technology; Test Result; Testing; Time; Ultrasonography; Work; X-Ray Computed Tomography; analog; base; clinical application; commercial application; commercialization; concept; cost; data integrity; digital; digital imaging; encryption; evaluation/testing; experience; image processing; innovation; interest; new technology; novel; novel strategies; patient privacy; prevent; programs; reconstruction; sensor; simulation; size; software development; success; technological innovation; tool; transmission process; trend

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): With the rapid development and deployment of high-performance computer and sensor technologies, digital imaging has come to its primetime and has replaced traditional film-based systems as the most widely used technology for medical image acquisition, processing, archiving, and communication. While digital imaging offers many great advantages over its analog counterpart, the success of the Internet and cost-effective digital recording has made it possible to create, replicate, transmit, and distribute digital content in an effortless way. The vulnerability to unauthorized use and alteration associated with easy access to the digital content of medical images now raises serious concerns. Protection of patient privacy and enforcement of data security for digital medical records has thus become increasingly important as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) Security Standards mandate health institutions to protect health information against unauthorized use or disclosure. The goal of this project is to complete the development of novel lossless digital watermarking techniques for data security and integrity of medical images. Existing digital watermarking products only provide lossy watermarking solutions that are primarily used in the entertainment industry for copyright protection of digital music, pictures and DVDs. These products are inapplicable to medical images because the lossy operation causes permanent alteration to the digital image content after watermarking. On the other hand, current DICOM standards used in clinical applications encode patient information separately and append it to the image as a header. There are reported cases where digital clinical images become separated from their DICOM headers and therefore have HIPAA implications. For clinical research, sometimes images must be anonymized by altering the DICOM headers to lessen the HIPAA impact and to reduce bias from knowing patient information in the analysis of the images. Hence there is clearly a need for an effective tool that would enable medical image watermarking with the patient information and the records such as the institution and accession number to allow tracking the image back to its source. To our knowledge, no commercial product exists at present time that provides such a tool. To address the need and seize the emerging market opportunity, the proposed project seeks to develop innovative techniques and products that will uniquely offer lossless watermarking solutions to medical imaging applications. Our approach is to make the usage, archiving, and communication of medical images much more secure and protectable, by embedding imperceptible watermarks into the images. These watermarks remain present after copying, network/Internet transmission, and even some alteration, and they can be retrieved when needed. Important information, such as patient identification, physician signatures, diagnostic specification and user history, can all be encrypted and encoded into the watermarks along with the image authentication code. Yet the original image can still be perfectly recovered from the watermarked image upon decoding. Hence the new technology will enable clinicians and researchers to protect effectively both patient privacy and the authenticity of their image data. During the Phase 1 project, we developed methods and software to achieve lossless region-of-interest (ROI) watermarking of medical images. We evaluated the new methods using several data sets of monochrome medical images from cytogenetic and radiology applications, based on the criteria of (1) imperceptibility, (2) capacity, and (3) robustness of the embedded watermarks. Test results show that the lossless ROI watermarking approach works very well and clearly exceeds the Phase 1 feasibility criteria. In the Phase 2 project we will complete the development of the proposed technology. We will refine the lossless ROI watermarking by optimizing several system parameters. We will extend the methodology to support lossless ubiquitous watermarking of medical images. We will also incorporate encryption functions and color transformations in the system to provide additional security for patient information and the support for color image watermarking. We will evaluate the resulting algorithms and software for a variety of medical imaging applications including radiology, pathology and cytogenetics. We will beta test the new technology in the clinical environment and optimize the technology as end-user input and feedbacks are gathered. Once fully developed and qualified, this new technology will be patented and incorporated into future IRIS (ADIR's parent company) in-vitro diagnostic imaging products. It also will be made commercially available through licensing agreements and partnerships with manufacturers of medical imaging systems and companies of general image processing and publishing software products. Finally, we will seek DICOM and JPEG2000 adoption and standardization for broader application and dissemination. This project develops innovative software techniques that will offer currently unavailable lossless watermarking solutions to medical imaging applications. The approach is to make the usage, archiving, and communication of medical images much more secure and protectable, by embedding imperceptible watermarks into the images. These watermarks remain present after copying, network/Internet transmission, or even some alteration, and can be retrieved when needed. Important information such as patient identification, physician signatures, diagnostic specification and user history can all be encrypted and encoded into the watermarks along with the image authentication code. Yet the original image can still be perfectly recovered from the watermarked image upon decoding. Hence the new technology will enable clinicians and researchers to effectively protect the patient privacy and integrity of their image data.

描述（由申请人提供）：随着高性能计算机和传感器技术的快速开发和部署，数字成像已经进入了黄金时段，并将基于传统的电影系统取代是用于医学图像获取，处理，归档和通信的最广泛使用的技术。虽然数字成像在模拟对应物中提供了许多巨大的优势，但互联网的成功和成本效益的数字录音使创建，复制，传输和分发数字内容以轻松的方式成为可能。与轻松访问医学图像的数字内容相关的未经授权使用和更改的脆弱性现在引起了严重的关注。因此，随着《健康保险可移植性和问责法》（HIPAA）安全标准授权卫生机构以保护健康信息免受未经授权的使用或披露，保护患者隐私和对数字病历的数据安全的保护变得越来越重要。该项目的目的是完成用于数据安全性和医学图像完整性的新型无损数字水印技术的开发。现有的数字水印产品仅提供损失的水印解决方案，这些解决方案主要用于娱乐行业，用于保护数字音乐，图片和DVD的版权。这些产品不适用于医学图像，因为损失的操作在水印后会导致数字图像内容的永久变化。另一方面，用于临床应用中的当前DICOM标准分别编码患者信息，并将其作为标头附加到图像。在据报道，数字临床图像与其DICOM标头分开，因此具有HIPAA的影响。对于临床研究，有时必须通过更改DICOM标头来减少HIPAA影响并从图像分析中了解患者信息来减少偏见来匿名化图像。因此，显然需要一种有效的工具，该工具可以通过患者信息和记录（例如机构和加入号码）进行水印，以使图像回到其源头。据我们所知，目前没有商业产品可以提供这种工具。为了满足需求并抓住新兴的市场机会，拟议的项目旨在开发创新的技术和产品，这些技术和产品将为医学成像应用提供无损水印的解决方案。我们的方法是通过将不可察觉的水印嵌入图像中，使医疗图像的使用，存档和通信更加安全和保护。这些水印在复制后仍存在，网络/互联网传输甚至进行了一些更改，并且可以在需要时检索它们。重要信息，例如患者识别，医师签名，诊断规范和用户历史记录，都可以与图像身份验证代码一起加密并编码到水印中。然而，在解码时，原始图像仍然可以从水印图像中完美恢复。因此，新技术将使临床医生和研究人员能够有效保护患者隐私和图像数据的真实性。在第1阶段项目中，我们开发了方法和软件来实现医学图像的无损区域（ROI）水印。我们基于（1）不可识别的标准，（2）容量和（3）嵌入式水印的鲁棒性，使用了细胞遗传学和放射学应用程序中的几个单色医学图像数据集评估了新方法。测试结果表明，无损的ROI水印方法效果很好，并且显然超过了第1阶段的可行性标准。在第二阶段项目中，我们将完成所提出的技术的开发。我们将通过优化多个系统参数来完善无损耗的ROI水印。我们将扩展该方法，以支持医学图像的无损无处不在水印。我们还将在系统中结合加密功能和颜色转换，以提供更多的安全性，以提供患者信息的额外安全性，并支持颜色图像水印。我们将评估所得的算法和软件，以包括放射学，病理学和细胞遗传学在内的各种医学成像应用。我们将在临床环境中测试新技术，并通过收集最终用户输入和反馈来优化该技术。一旦充分开发和资格，这项新技术将获得专利，并将其纳入未来的Iris（Adir母公司）In-Vitro诊断成像产品中。它还将通过与医学成像系统的制造商以及一般图像处理和发布软件产品的公司的制造商合作和合作伙伴关系。最后，我们将寻求DICOM和JPEG2000采用和标准化，以进行更广泛的应用和传播。该项目开发了创新的软件技术，目前将为医学成像应用提供目前不可用的无损失水印解决方案。方法是通过将不可察觉的水印嵌入图像中，使医疗图像的使用，存档和通信更加安全和保护。这些水印在复制，网络/互联网传输甚至进行一些更改后仍存在，并且可以在需要时检索。重要信息，例如患者识别，医师签名，诊断规范和用户历史记录，都可以与图像身份验证代码一起加密并编码到水印中。然而，在解码时，原始图像仍然可以从水印图像中完美恢复。因此，新技术将使临床医生和研究人员能够有效地保护其图像数据的患者隐私和完整性。