VUF-MIWS: A Visible and User-Friendly Watermarking Scheme for Medical Images

The integration of Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) technology has revolutionized healthcare, allowing rapid access to medical images and enhancing remote diagnostics in telemedicine. However, this advancement raises serious cybersecurity concerns, particularly regarding unauthorized access and data integrity. This paper presents a novel, user-friendly, visible watermarking scheme for medical images—Visual and User-Friendly Medical Image Watermarking Scheme (VUF-MIWS)—designed to secure medical image ownership while maintaining usability for diagnostic purposes. VUF-MIWS employs a unique combination of inpainting and data hiding techniques to embed hospital logos as visible watermarks, which can be removed seamlessly once image authenticity is verified, restoring the image to its original state. Experimental results demonstrate the scheme’s robust performance, with the watermarking process preserving critical diagnostic information with high fidelity. The method achieved Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratios (PSNR) above 70 dB and Structural Similarity Index Measures (SSIM) of 0.99 for inpainted images, indicating minimal loss of image quality. Additionally, VUF-MIWS effectively restored the ROI region of medical images post-watermark removal, as verified through test cases with restored watermarked regions matching the original images. These findings affirm VUF-MIWS’s suitability for secure telemedicine applications.