Bio-inspiring Techniques in Watermarking Medical Images: A Review

Bio-inspiring (BI) is a well-established paradigm with current systems having many of the characteristics of biological computers and capable of performing a variety of tasks that are difficult to do using conventional techniques. BI is considered as one of the most important increasing fields, which attract a large number of researchers and scientists working in areas such as neuro-computing, global optimization, swarms and evolutionary computing. On the other hand, digital radiological modalities in modern hospitals have led to the producing a variety of a vast amount of digital medical files. Therefore, for the medical imaging, the authenticity needs to ensure the image belongs to the correct patient, the integrity check to ensure the image has not been modified, and safe transfer are very big challenges. The integrity of the images must be protected by using watermarking, which is called integrity watermark. At the same time the copyright and intellectual property of the medical images should be also protected, which is called copyright watermark. This chapter presents a brief overview of well known Bio-inspiring techniques including neural networks, genetic algorithm, swarms and evolutionary algorithms and show how BI techniques could be successfully employed to solve watermarking problem. Challenges to be addressed and future directions of research are also presented and an extensive bibliography is included.