Our previous study presented a lossless digital signature embedding (LDSE) method for assuring the integrity of 2D medical images in network transit or during archival. With the advent of multi-detector CT scanners and volume acquisition technologies, a PACS exam can now potentially generate hundreds, even thousands, of images. To perform the 2D LDSE method on each individual image in the volume would be extremely time consuming and inefficient. For this reason, a novel 3D LDSE method has been investigated for 3D image volumes. The method begins with generating a single digital signature (DS) of the entire volume. Embedding of the DS is performed by first identifying a bit stream from the image volume based on the correlation of 3D pixel values. The bit stream is compressed using lossless compression methods and the DS is concatenated with the compressed bit stream. This concatenated bit stream is then embedded within the original image volume. During the verification process, the embedded bit stream is extracted and utilized to recover the original bit stream and the original DS. The original bit stream can be used to restore the image volume which in turn can be used in the verification of the DS. In addition, to 3D LDSE embedding methodology for image volumes, a new procedure is developed to address clinical workflow for 3D image volumes. Experimental results demonstrated that the 3D LDSE method can assure the integrity of 3D image volume efficiently and effectively. In addition, a 3D clinical image workflow procedure was demonstrated.

Date Published: 16 March 2006
PDF: 8 pages
Proc. SPIE 6145, Medical Imaging 2006: PACS and Imaging Informatics, 61450R (16 March 2006); doi: 10.1117/12.653511

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 6145:
Medical Imaging 2006: PACS and Imaging Informatics
Steven C. Horii; Osman M. Ratib, Editor(s)