A secure scheme for medical image transmission

A novel image scaling based reversible watermarking scheme for secure medical image transmission

Recently, there is an increasing demand for efficient and secure transreception of medical images in telemedicine applications. Though a fixed spectrum is allocated to each user, most of the time it remains unused by the concerned user. Cognitive Radio (CR) is a technology that utilizes the unused spectrum efficiently by adopting spectrum sensing concept. This paper proposes an efficient and secure transmission of medical images by adopting CR technology and image encryption technique. Firstly, the novel medical image encryption algorithm is proposed to encrypt the DICOM (Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine) image effectively. Then, the spectrum sensing technique is carried out via Universal Software Radio Peripheral (USRP) to sense the unused frequency band to transmit the encrypted bio signal. The proposed encryption algorithm combines DNA (Deoxyribo Nucleic Acid) sequence operation and chaotic maps to successfully encrypt the DICOM image pixels. Experimental results are done and various analysis such as Unified Average Changing Intensity (UACI), Number of Pixel Changing Rate (NPCR), entropy estimation and chi-square tests are carried out to validate the sternness of the encryption algorithm.

Medical images exchanged over vulnerable networks are sensitive to modifications or tampering which could lead to misdiagnosis, risking the lives of the patients. Therefore, to provide safe and secure transmission of medical images, key security requirements such as authenticity, integrity, and confidentiality must be addressed. In this paper, a novel and efficient algorithm is proposed which provides security services for transmitted medical images in tele-medicine applications. The proposed algorithm employs joint encryption/watermarking procedures to provide the required security services, as well as to provide control access privileges at the receiving side. The algorithm is based on reversible data hiding principles that guarantee the extraction of the hidden data while restoring the original image unaffected. The embedded data is basically two watermarks; a spatial domain watermark and an encrypted domain watermark. The dual watermarks allow the authenticity and integrity of the transmitted medical images to be verified in the spatial and encrypted domains. The proposed algorithm has been extensively evaluated using three performance metrics; embedding capacity, visual image quality, and entropy. The ability of the algorithm to fulfill the security, reversibility, and separability requirements has been validated.

The Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) is reforming healthcare by enabling interconnected medical devices and systems to facilitate efficient data collection, transmission, and analysis. While IoMT has significantly improved real-time monitoring and personalized care, the transmission of high-resolution medical images remains a challenge due to bandwidth constraints, latency issues, data loss, and computational overhead. Efficient and secure medical image transmission is critical to ensuring reliable diagnostics and timely patient care in this ecosystem. This research presents an optimized Deep Learning (DL) architecture developed to overcome the limitations of medical image transmission in IoMT environments. The proposed solution incorporates Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) for spatial feature extraction and dimensionality reduction while preserving diagnostic-critical information, and Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) networks to manage sequential data and mitigate transmission issues such as packet loss and latency. The framework incorporates robust encryption mechanisms to ensure data security without significantly increasing computational overhead. Once predictions are made, the data is securely transferred to the cloud for further analysis and storage. Furthermore, Hippopotamus Optimization is utilised to enhance the model's performance and fine-tune hyperparameters, improving both efficiency and accuracy. Performance evaluations were conducted using real-world medical image datasets under varying IoMT network conditions. The results demonstrate that the proposed CNN-LSTM framework delivers superior performance across key metrics, like Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratio (PSNR), accuracy, F1 score, specificity, and sensitivity. Additionally, the framework optimizes encryption and decryption times and reduces bandwidth consumption, ensuring efficient and secure data transmission. This approach showcases a significant advancement in IoMT-based medical imaging, paving the way for enhanced reliability and efficiency in healthcare delivery systems.

In telemedicine applications, sensitive and private patients' information is collected and transmitted via a telecommunication system. To assure the security services of the exchanged medical images, improved cryptographic algorithms should be designed to protect private information against attacks. In this paper, we propose an efficient cryptosystem for medical image encryption and authentication. The cryptosystem is an Improved Advanced Encryption Standard (IAES) - Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA) hybrid scheme that uses symmetric and asymmetric approaches. The first one is used to encrypting the image. The second one is used to encrypting the initial secret key and owner's signature that permit authentication. The implementation on a Cyclone III FPGA uses 18.594 of total logic elements, 17.820 of total combinatorial functions, and 131.616 of total memory. It runs at a frequency of 147.16 MHz, consumes 171.16 mW and can achieve excellent throughput of 1.71 Gb / s. Results prove that the proposed cipher framework is appropriate for embedded systems respecting both real-time performance and resources constrained. The security analysis is successfully performed and experimental results prove that the suggested technique provides the basis of cryptography.

An efficient coding scheme for progressive transmission of gray-scale images is presented. In the scheme, a rough sketch of an image is transmitted first and the details are added later. At the final stage of transmission, a receiver can reproduce the exact replica of an original image with high coding efficiency. This kind of presentation is especially desirable for the interactive visual search of large image databases, where a viewer can recognize image content as quickly as possible, halt transmission of unwanted detail, and retry another image. This scheme utilizes subsampling and level-plane coding in a recursive way. Thus, the coding algorithm is simple and can be easily implemented even on a personal computer. Computer simulations show that the scheme achieves the mean code length of 5.24 b/pel for an image, which is almost the same as that of efficient nonprogressive coding schemes. >

A four-directionally expandable conservative multi-scroll chaotic system(CMSCS) has been constructed by introducing piecewise functions in this study, and the novel system exhibits a rich and vivid dynamic behaviour. Through a series of dynamic analyses, such as Lyapunov exponents, bifurcation diagrams, basins of attraction, and coexisting attractors, the system is thoroughly verified, confirming its extensive conservative properties, homogeneous multi-stability, and heterogeneous multi-stability, revealing its application potential in secure communication. To verify the circuit feasibility of the system, an analog circuit of the system was designed and simulated, and digital circuit simulation was performed using a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA). The results show that the experimental results are in good agreement with the numerical calculation results. Based on this, this paper successfully designed a bit-plane-based image encryption system combining bit planes and applied it to medical image encryption. Experimental results show that the encryption system performs well in ensuring data security and protecting privacy, providing an innovative and effective solution for the secure transmission of medical images.

Confidentiality of Electronic Health Record (EHR) and privacy are two important security requirements for healthcare systems. Many devices on the EHR network utilize little or no encryption, which makes data in transit vulnerable to exploitative attacks, such as Man-in-the-Middle and other filtration methods. Recently, watermarking algorithms as an efficient response to these requirements is in the underline. In this paper, we present a robust watermarking method conceived as part of an Electronic Health Record platform. In this method a chaotic encryption and blind medical image watermarking technique was incorporated into the system as an authorization mechanism to ensure confidentiality and integrity of electronic health information. We present a hybrid watermarking method based on a combination of discrete wavelet transform (DWT), hessenberg Decomposition (HD), Singular value decomposition (SVD) and an original chaos crypto system based on the Arnold Transform (AT) of Singular Value Decomposition. In order to spread the robustness of our algorithm and provide additional security, an improved SVD-AT embedding and extraction procedure has been used to scramble the EHR data in the preprocessing step of the proposed method. In the process of watermark embedding, an R-level discrete wavelet transform was applied to the host image. The low frequency wavelet coefficients are selected to carry this scrambled-watermark. In extraction process, the stored used plain image is obtained from the trusted authority server to complete the verification process. The receiver should compare the unsigned watermark with the extracted watermark again. The verification can be done before clinical procedures and diagnosis. The proposed watermarking method endures entirety attacks and rightly extracts the hidden watermark without significant degradation in the image quality, thus, when the Peak Signal to Noise Ratio (PSNR) and Normalized Correlation (NC) performance of the proposed algorithm is performed.

Verifiable medical images for E-healthcare: A novel watermarking approach using robust bit-wise association of self-mutating offsprings of pixels

Introduction: Studies on the security and interoperability of Internet of medical things (IoMT)in health are still scarce. The most important effects of the IoMT on health care are the ability to exchange information and reduce hospitalization and health care costs. The main challenges of the IoMT in healthcare are security and protection of privacy, among which encryption of images is very important in the field of communication and security. The main purpose of this study was to design a secure channel for encrypting and sending medical data. Methods: This study presents a new method for encrypting medical images to preserve patient information by synchronizing two chaotic systems. The use of chaotic signals as carriers of medical images greatly enhances security and greatly reduces the possibility of detection. The idea of synchronization of chaotic systems was presented in multi states with fixed time delay. In this idea, with the help of Lyapunov’s theory of stability, a controller was designed to establish the stability of the closed-loop system. Then, according to the synchronization idea and its error, a chaotic masking method was proposed to encrypt patient images. The simulation and accuracy of the results of the presented method were investigated in MATLAB software version 2020.Results: The simulations were performed on medical color images and CT, MRI, and X-ray images. Encrypted and recovered images were obtained by the proposed system. To evaluate the performance of the proposed method, various criteria including image histogram, signal-to-noise rate, correlation, and entropy of information were evaluated. The results showed the excellent image encrypting efficiency of the proposed method.Conclusion: Using the proposed method, medical images were encrypted based on a secure protocol, and then with satisfactory quality, images were recovered after transmission.

This paper introduces a new scheme for image coding, transmission, and reconstruction using DCT. Instead of coding the DCT coefficients in increasing frequency order, this new scheme employs a sorting index which is a weighted sum of both frequency and the energy of the corresponding frequency band. The new scheme allows image details to be transmitted at an earlier stage, resulting in improved image quality. Flexible reconstruction of subimages is also discussed.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to propose a novel and secure image transmission based on the unpredictable behavior of the chaotic systems.Design/methodology/approachThe proposed approach includes two main contributions: synchronization scheme and transmission scheme. The synchronization scheme benefits the advantage of the fractional-order active synchronization method. A new control law is derived to asymptotically synchronize the underlined fractional-order Bloch chaotic system. The validity of the proposed synchronization scheme is proved by the Lyapunov stability theorem. Then, a novel image transmission scheme is designed to transfer image data via chaotic signals, which modulates the encrypted data in the sender signals and demodulates it at the receiver side.FindingsNumerical simulations are provided to show the validity and effectiveness of the proposed image transmission system. Furthermore, the performance of the image transmission system is evaluated using some illustrative examples and their corresponding statistical tests. The results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method in comparison with other proposed methods in this subject.Originality/valueA new chaos-based image transmission system is developed based on the synchronization of Bloch chaotic system. The introduced transmission system is interesting and could be applicable to any kind of secure image/video transmission.

This paper presents a novel generic channel coding scheme for image transmission over wireless channels. The product code is constructed using one classical convolutional code in one direction and one recursive systematic code (RSC) in the other direction. At the receiving end, the data are alternatively decoded along the two directions. In each iteration, any correctly decoded data in one direction will be used to constrain the decoding along the other direction. The constrained Viterbi decoding algorithm is designed in such a way that the survival paths are forced to pass through the positions where the bits have already been correctly decoded. With such a constraint, we achieve a reduction of candidate paths for the maximum likelihood (ML) decoding as well as a speed up of convergence. Experimental results show that the proposed scheme is able to outperform all existing schemes under some random and bursty error channel conditions.

With the rapid development of the Internet of Things technology and the gradual upgrade of communication methods, a new type of telemedicine system encounters a golden opportunity for development. However, lots of portable sensors for medical health have generated a large amount of sensitive data while bringing convenience to people, which makes the original transmission scheme difficult to meet current transmission requirements. Aiming at realizing high efficiency of image transmission and high security of sensitive image data in the telemedicine system, this article proposes a secure and traceable image transmission scheme. The sensitive image is first compressed and encrypted by the optimized semitensor product compressed sensing algorithm. By the perceptual hash algorithm, the image hash value, also called image fingerprint, is generated from the image content to verify the authenticity of the image. All the image fingerprints are merged to form an image fingerprint chain, which provides the traceability of the image authentication. The digital watermarking technology is used to hide the encrypted sensitive image into a meaningful carrier image, which increases the transmission content without enlarging the transmission load. The experimental results show that the proposed image transmission scheme can effectively improve the transmission efficiency, the reconstruction effect, the security, and the authenticity of the image transmission in the telemedicine systems.

Independent component analysis (ICA) along with a differential pulse-code modulation (DPCM) system has been used for secure transmission of medical images. The advantage of this approach is the ability to compress images that will be transmitted securely. The combined DPCM-ICA system can be designed with varying levels of quantization, however, image quality is sacrificed for low quantization levels.