Reliable and robust transmission and storage techniques for medical images with patient information

There is an increased emphasis on the use of digital techniques in all aspects of human life today. Broadcast radio and television, cellular phone services, consumer and entertainment electronics etc are increasingly using digital signal processing techniques to improve the quality of service. Transmission and storage of documentation and images pertaining to patient records cannot remain an exception to this global trend. Hence, patient records (text and image information) are increasingly stored and processed in digital form. Currently, text and image information, which constitute two separate pieces of data are handled as different files. Thus, there is a possibility of the text and message information, pertaining to different patients, being interchanged and thus mishandled. This can be avoided by merging text and image information in such a manner that the two can be separated without perceptible damage to information contained in either file. Digital watermarking techniques can be used to interleave patient information with medical images. In this work, we have employed digital watermarking along with strong cryptographic protocols and powerful error correcting codes. This reduces the probability of sensitive patient information falling into the wrong hands and ensures information integrity when it is conveyed over noisy channels.