A Robust Medical Image Watermarking Approach Based on K-Level Clustering and Asymmetric Encryption

The increasing use of digital medical images in healthcare has raised significant concerns regarding their security, privacy, and integrity during transmission and storage. Unauthorized access, tampering, and image manipulation pose severe risks, potentially leading to compromised diagnoses and patient safety issues. This paper presents a novel asymmetric image encryption and watermarking scheme aimed at securing medical images. The proposed scheme integrates cryptographic encryption and digital watermarking to protect sensitive patient information and ensure the authenticity and integrity of medical images. Specifically, the scheme encrypts patient data using asymmetric encryption and embeds the encrypted data into the medical image as a QR code watermark. This watermark is securely embedded into the least significant bits of the image pixels using a clustering algorithm, ensuring resilience against common image distortions, such as noise, rotation, and compression. Experimental results demonstrate the robustness of the proposed scheme, as evidenced by high PSNR and SSIM values, indicating minimal impact on image quality while ensuring strong security. The proposed method offers an efficient solution for enhancing the security of medical images in healthcare systems.