2016 IEEE Students Conference on Electrical, Electronics and Computer Science

Reversible Data Hiding for Medical Images using

Integer-to-Integer Wavelet Transform
Smita Agrawal

Manoj Kumar

Department of Computer Science

Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar University
Lucknow(U.P.), India
Email: smita.bbau@gmail.com

Department of Computer Science

Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar University
Lucknow(U.P.), India
Email: mkjnuiitr@gmail.com

AbstractReversible data hiding is a method of hiding secret

information (watermark) in some multimedia cover data in
such a way that after extracting the watermark, original cover
data can be recovered without any loss of information. In
this paper, a novel reversible data hiding technique, based on
integer-to-integer wavelet transform and histogram-bin-shifting,
is proposed for medical images. Images are divided into blocks
and smoothness of the blocks is evaluated by calculating entropy
of each block. Integer-to-integer wavelet transform is applied over
smooth blocks and watermark is embedded in all subbands of
detail part. Histogram-bin-shifting technique is used to embed
the watermark. The proposed scheme is applied on various
medical images and also compared with one of the recent
existing reversible data hiding techniques. Higher PSNR values
demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed scheme.

Keywords: Reversible data hiding; Entropy; Integer-tointeger wavelet transform; Histogram-bin-shifting; PSNR.
I. I NTRODUCTION
Due to the recent growth of internet and technologies, it
is quite easy for people to access the digital media such as
digital images, audio and videos etc. This easy access provides
convenience to the users but also poses a threat to the security
of digital content as it also provides a chance to illegitimate
users to modify and tamper the digital content. Digital watermarking provides a way to secure multimedia content such
as digital images. Digital watermarking is a way to covertly
hiding the secret information (watermark) in multimedia cover
data such that the distortion generated due to the watermark
embedding is perceptually negligible [1]. Digital watermarking
is a very effective way to secure digital images but there is
also a drawback that there is always some information loss
in digital watermarking. This is not acceptable in some very
sensitive applications such as medical, defence etc. Reversible
watermarking is a method to embed the secret information i.e.
watermark in the original cover image in such a way that at
the time of extraction, along with the extraction of watermark,
original cover image is also recovered without any information
loss. Due to its lossless nature, reversible watermarking is also
called invertible or lossless data hiding. It is quite useful in
very sensitive fields such as medical field where even a single
bit information loss may produce the wrong interpretation of
data which leads to wrong diagnosis. Reversible data hiding is
mainly used for content authentication and is a subset of fragile

978-1-4673-7918-2/16/$31.00 2016 IEEE

watermarking. In fragile watermarking, if any changes are

made in the watermarked content, watermark may be altered or
even destroyed and thus, it is impossible to recover the original
cover image in its entirety. Therefore, reversible data hiding
techniques are not tested against various signal processing
attacks. The main utility of reversible data hiding techniques is
in the fields where, after the extraction of watermark bits from
the watermarked media, distortion free recovery of original
cover media is of extreme importance.
In literature, various reversible data hiding schemes have
been proposed since J. M. Barton [2] gave the concept of
reversible watermarking in 1997. Since then many researchers
proposed various techniques and algorithms for reversible data
hiding [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15]
[16] [17] [18] [19]. Reversible data hiding techniques can
be broadly categorized [20] into lossless compression based
techniques [4], histogram-bin-shifting based techniques [5] [6]
and difference expansion based embedding techniques [12]
[13] [14].
In lossless compression based techniques, compressed watermark bits are embedded to increase the embedding capacity.
Celik et al. [4] used lossless compression based approach and
proposed a reversible data hiding scheme.
Histogram modification based reversible data hiding technique was first proposed by Ni et al. [5]. Ni et al. [5]
utilized the peak point and zero point or minimum point of
histogram of image. After that, various reversible data hiding
techniques [6] [7] [8] [9] [5] [10] [11] have been proposed
based on histogram-bin-shifting. In histogram modification
based techniques, embedding capacity is equal to the peak
point value of the histogram. Histogram-bin-shifting based
techniques belong to simple and effective class of reversible
data hiding techniques.
Tian [12] introduced the concept of Difference Expansion
(DE). In this, differences of the adjacent pair of pixels are
expanded by two times and if no underflow/ overflow occurs,
one watermark bit is added to it. In order to increase the embedding capacity, various other reversible data hiding schemes
based on the DE are proposed [13] [14] [15]. To increase the
embedding rate in medical images, a solution is given in [10]
by adaptively switching between histogram shifting and DE.
In [18], authors proposed a reversible watermarking tech-

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nique based on integer-to-integer wavelet transform and difference expansion. Integer-to-integer wavelet transform is quite
useful in reversible data hiding as it provides complete reversibility because it maps integers to integers. Therefore,
there is almost no information loss. In reversible data hiding
techniques, main aim is to maintain or improve the visual
quality as well as the embedding capacity. Medical imaging
is a very emergent field in todays era of digital world as
various health organizations in the world are now interested in
keeping the patients records in digital format along with their
reports. In medical images, it is very important to retain the
important information as any information loss or modification
can lead to wrong diagnosis and hence can be proved fatal
for the patient. Reversible data hiding provides an appropriate
way for securing such medical images.
In this paper, we propose a novel reversible data hiding technique for medical images, based on integer-to-integer wavelet
transform and histogram modification. Because, in medical
images, information play a very prominent role, it is important
to find the space for embedding where the information is very
less. For this purpose, entropy values of the image blocks
are calculated. Entropy provides the average information and
therefore it is utilized for calculating the smoothness of the
blocks. The blocks having less entropy will be more smooth
and suitable for watermark embedding. On the blocks of the
image, whose entropy is less, no embedding is performed.
For embedding purpose, basic histogram-bin-shifting based
technique is used as it is an effective technique for embedding watermark reversibly. Proposed scheme has also been
compared with one of the existing techniques [19] for medical
images based on integer-to-integer wavelet transform.
The organization of the paper is as follows. In Section II,
basic concepts such as integer-to-integer wavelet transform,
entropy and histogram-bin-shifting has been described. Section
III describes proposed embedding and extraction algorithms
in detail. Experimental results are reported and discussed in
Section IV. Conclusions are drawn in Section V.
II. R ELATED THEORY
In this section, basic concepts related to the proposed
scheme are described.
A. Integer-to-Integer Wavelet Transform
Conventional wavelet transforms is not very useful in reversible data hiding as it is not fully reversible. For example, if
an image is decomposed using conventional wavelet transform,
it may not be guaranteed that the wavelet coefficient values
after watermark embedding would be in integer. Information
may be lost if any floating point value is truncated and original
cover image cannot be recovered in its entirety. Therefore, to
deal with this issue, an invertible integer-to-integer wavelet
transform based on lifting scheme [21] [22] [23] is utilized in
the proposed scheme. In integer-to-integer wavelet transform,
integers are mapped to integers and thus, does not cause any
information loss.

Integer-to-integer forward wavelet transform for one dimensional (1-D) can be defined as [21]:
1, = 0,2 1/4(1,1 + 1, ) + 1/2,
1, = 0,2+1 1/2(0,2 + 0,2+2 ) + 1/2

(1)

where, , and , are the low frequency and high

frequency wavelet coefficients at the level respectively [21].
The function rounds to the nearest integer towards minus
infinity. Similar to conventional wavelet transform and wavelet
packet transform, low and high frequency wavelet coefficient
can be further decomposed into low and high frequency
coefficients. For performing first level decomposition on 2D signal (image), the eq. (1) can be applied in both vertical
and horizontal directions. The inverse transform of integer-tointeger wavelet transform can be calculated as:
0,2 = 1, 1/4(1,1 + 1, ) + 1/2,
0,2+1 = 1, 1/2(0,2 + 0,2+2 ) + 1/2

(2)

B. Entropy
In information theory, entropy can be defined as the measure
of the uncertainty of a random variable [24]. Entropy of a
random variable with probability mass function () can
be defined as:

() ()
(3)
() =
=

Here, the log is to the base 2 and entropy is measured in bits

[24]. The entropy of an image can be calculated approximately
by the histogram of image [25]. Entropy demonstrate the
average information and therefore, it can be used to find the
average information present in an image.
C. Histogram-Bin-Shifting based Reversible Data Hiding
Here, we describe the histogram-bin-shifting based reversible data hiding technique proposed by Ni et al. [5]. In
this, peak point and zero point of histogram of a given image
are used and pixel values are changed slightly to embed the
watermark.
1) Embedding Technique: The basic histogram-bin-shifting
technique given by Ni et al. [5] utilizes the histogram of
original host image. The main aim behind using the histogram
of an image is to use the peak point (the pixel value occurring
most frequently) and zero point (the pixel value corresponding
to which there is no grayscale value in the image) of the
histogram of original host image. The number of pixels
between peak point and zero point are shifted by 1 unit for
creating space next to the peak point and watermark bits are
embedded in this space. For this purpose, histogram of the
given image is generated and peak point and zero point of
the image histogram are stored. Whole image is scanned in
a particular sequence (either row-wise or column-wise) and
all the pixels between peak point and zero point are shifted
to right by 1 unit (if the value of peak point is less than the
value of zero point) and space is created for data embedding
next to the peak point. Again the image is scanned in same

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order (as used before) and if pixel value is found to be equal

to the peak point, to-be-embedded watermark bit sequence is
checked. If the to-be-embedded watermark bit is 1, the pixel
value is incremented by 1, otherwise pixel value would remain
as it is.
2) Extraction and Recovery Technique: For extraction of
the watermark bits and recovery of original host image,
watermarked image is again scanned in same order as in
embedding and if the pixel value is one greater than the peak
point value, 1 is extracted as the watermark bit. If pixel value
is found to be equal to the peak point value, 0 is extracted as
the watermark bit. By applying this process, whole watermark
is extracted from the watermarked image. For the recovery of
the original host image, whole image is scanned once again
and all pixel values , such that ( , ],
are subtracted by 1. Thus, the original image is recovered bitby-bit.

Original
Image

Calculate Entropy
of each block

No
Leave the block
without embedding

Find Highest
Entropy

If block
entropy <
highest
entropy value

Yes
Select block for
watermark embedding

Watermarked
Image

Concatenate all
blocks
Watermark bits

Perform inverse
integer-to-integer
wavelet transform

Histogram
modification

Apply
integer-to-integer
wavelet transform

Select high frequency

subbands for
watermark embedding

(a)

III. P ROPOSED A LGORITHM

In medical images, generally, there is very large background
area, which contains no information and this leads to the
sequence of 0s. This sequence of 0s in medical images can
be used for data embedding. In this paper, a novel reversible
data hiding scheme for medical images is proposed which
utilizes integer-to-integer wavelet transform and histogram
modification for watermark embedding.
The proposed embedding and extraction procedure is shown
in Fig. 1 (a) and Fig. 1 (b) respectively. For embedding, the
given original image is divided into 4 equal sized blocks
and entropy of each block is calculated. Block having the
highest entropy, is not used for data embedding. Integerto-integer wavelet transform is applied over the remaining
blocks. In this way, blocks are decomposed into low (LL)
and high frequency subbands (HL, LH, HH). Only high
frequency subbands i.e. HL, LH and HH are used for the
embedding purpose as high frequency subbands of wavelet
decomposition have Laplace distribution and this property can
be well utilized for the data embedding [26]. Basic histogram
bin shifting technique (described in Section II C) is used for
data embedding in all high frequency subbands of all selected
blocks. After watermark embedding, inverse integer-to-integer
wavelet transform is applied to obtain modified blocks and
then, all blocks are combined to obtain watermarked image
.
At the time of extraction, watermarked image is divided
into 4 equal sized blocks. Position of the block having highest
entropy is extracted. Integer-to-integer wavelet transform is
applied on all blocks (except the block having highest entropy)
and low and high frequency subbands are obtained. Histogram
modification technique (described in Section II C) is used
for extracting the watermark bits and original contents of
the blocks. After extraction of the watermark bits, inverse
integer-to-integer wavelet transform is applied. All blocks are
combined to obtain original recovered image .
The proposed embedding and extraction algorithms are
described as follows:

Divide image
into 4 blocks

Watermarked
Image

Divide image
into blocks

Obtain the block position of

having highest entropy value as
overhead information

Use rest of the

blocks for
data extraction

Apply
integer-to-integer
wavelet transform

Extract Watermark
bits

Recovered
Original Image

Concatenate all 4
blocks to obtain
Original image

Histogram
modification for
data extraction

Apply inverse
integer-to-integer
wavelet transform

(b)

Fig. 1. (a) Embedding Procedure; (b) Extraction Procedure.

A. Embedding Algorithm
1) Divide the original image into 4 equal sized non
overlapping blocks.
2) Calculate the entropy of each block. Find out the block
having highest entropy.
3) If the entropy of the block is less than the highest
entropy, use the block for watermark embedding.
4) Apply integer-to-integer wavelet transform over all the
selected blocks and obtain the low frequency subband
LL and high frequency subbands HL, LH and HH.
5) Apply the basic histogram-bin-shifting based technique
(described in Section II C) on all high frequency subbands i.e HL, LH and HH.

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TABLE I
PSNR OF P ROPOSED SCHEME AND E XISTING SCHEME FOR VARIOUS TEST IMAGES SHOWN IN F IG . 1
S.No.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.

Images
image1
image2
image3
image4
image5
image6

Capacity (bpp)
0.35
0.42
0.40
0.47
0.32
0.49

PSNR (Proposed Scheme)

56.43
55.05
55.71
50.12
56.90
51.05

PSNR (Existing Scheme) [19]

53.91
52.32
52.98
48.61
54.05
47.20

6) Perform inverse integer-to-integer wavelet transform on

all modified blocks.
7) Concatenate all 4 blocks to obtain the watermarked
image .
B. Extraction Algorithm
1) Consider the watermarked image . Divide into 4
equal sized non overlapping blocks
2) Based on the overhead information, obtain the position
of block having highest entropy.
3) Except the block having highest entropy, decompose all
other blocks (watermarked blocks) into low and high frequency subbands using integer-to-integer wavelet transform.
4) Apply extraction and recovery algorithm using basic
histogram-bin-shifting (as described in Section II C) to
extract the watermark bits and original content of each
watermarked block.
5) Apply inverse integer-to-integer wavelet transform over
all blocks obtained from step 4.
6) Concatenate all 4 blocks to obtain the original cover
image .
IV. E XPERIMENTAL R ESULTS AND D ISCUSSION
Proposed embedding and extraction algorithms have been
applied on various medical images of size 512 512
as shown in Fig. 2. The medical test images shown in
Fig. 2 (a) - (e) are obtained from public access database
(https://eddie.via.cornell.edu/cgibin/datac/logon.cgi) and the
image shown in Fig. 2( f) is obtained from a diagnosis
center. Images shown in Fig. 2 (a) - (f) are indicated in
Table 1 as image1, image2, image3, image4, image5 and
image6 respectively. Images are divided into 4 equal sized non
overlapping blocks. Entropy of each block is calculated and all
the blocks, except the block having the highest entropy value,
are used for watermark embedding. Integer-to-integer wavelet
transform is applied over all selected blocks and the blocks are
decomposed into low and high frequency subbands. Now, the
watermark embedding is done in all high frequency subbands
using basic histogram-bin-shifting technique.
For reversible data hiding techniques, generally, Peak Signal
to Noise Ratio (PSNR) is used as a measure to calculate
the distortion created in watermarked image as compared to
the original host image. High PSNR values indicate the less
distortion and therefore better visual quality. PSNR values

(a)

(d)

(b)

(c)

(e)

(f)

Fig. 2. Set of medical images of size 512 512.

between watermarked image and original grayscale image can

be obtained by using the following formula:
( 255 255 )
= 10 10

where, Mean Square Error (MSE) can be defined as =

1 1
1
2
[(, ) (, )] .
=0 =0

where, is the original image of size and is the

watermarked image.
Proposed scheme has been tested on several medical images
and PSNR values are calculated between watermarked images
and original images. PSNR values obtained after applying
proposed scheme are shown in Table 1. As it is evident
from the Table 1 that the PSNR values obtained for proposed
scheme are high and hence, it shows that the proposed scheme
provides better visual quality for the watermarked images.
For proposed scheme, capacity is calculated as the number
of peak points in all high frequency subbands of all selected
blocks. Embedding capacity is calculated in bits per pixel
(bpp) and shown in Table 1. Proposed scheme has also
been compared with one of the existing integer-to-integer
wavelet transform based reversible watermarking schemes [19]
and results are shown in Table 1. As shown in Table 1,
PSNR values obtained through proposed scheme are higher as
compared to the existing scheme [19]. Therefore, it is evident

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that the proposed scheme provides better results as compared

to the existing scheme [19]. It shows the effectiveness of the
proposed scheme.
V. C ONCLUSIONS
This paper proposes a reversible data hiding scheme based
on integer-to-integer wavelet transform and histogram bin
shifting for medical images. In the proposed technique, images
are divided into blocks and entropy values of image blocks are
used to find out the smooth blocks for watermark embedding.
Experimental results and comparison with one of the existing
schemes show that the proposed technique can achieve good
visual quality at higher embedding capacity. High PSNR
values demonstrate that low distortion is created in images
after watermark embedding and therefore, indicate that the
proposed scheme is very effective for reversibly hiding the
watermark in medical images .
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