Blockchain-Based Reversible Data Hiding for Securing Medical Images. (8th May 2021)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Horng, Ji-Hwei; Chang, Ching-Chun; Li, Guan-Long; Lee, Wai-Kong; Hwang, Seong Oun
• Other Names: Chen Chi-Hua Academic Editor.
• Is Part Of: Journal of healthcare engineering. Volume 2021(2021)
• Publication Date: 2021-05-08
• Subjects: Hospital buildings -- Environmental engineering -- Periodicals; Medical technology -- Periodicals; Medical informatics -- Periodicals; 610.28
• DOI: 10.1155/2021/9943402
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 2040-2295

Abstract

Abstract : Medical images carry a lot of important information for making a medical diagnosis. Since the medical images need to be communicated frequently to allow timely and accurate diagnosis, it has become a target for malicious attacks. Hence, medical images are protected through encryption algorithms. Recently, reversible data hiding on the encrypted images (RDHEI) schemes are employed to embed private information into the medical images. This allows effective and secure communication, wherein the privately embedded information (e.g., medical records and personal information) is very useful to the medical diagnosis. However, existing RDHEI schemes still suffer from low embedding capacity, which limits their applicability. Besides, such solution still lacks a good mechanism to ensure its integrity and traceability. To resolve these issues, a novel approach based on image block-wise encryption and histogram shifting is proposed to provide more embedding capacity in the encrypted images. The embedding rate is over 0.8 bpp for typical medical images. On top of that, a blockchain-based system for RDHEI is proposed to resolve the traceability. The private information is stored on the blockchain together with the hash value of the original medical image. This allows traceability of all the medical images communicated over the proposed blockchain network.