A study on secured encryption of medical images using significant visual cryptography

Abstract

The medical images of people are important and sensitive and cannot be shared with the public considering privacy measures. Maintaining the confidentiality of the medical image is essential, and leakage of such information can cause great loss. Therefore, the information has to be secured while being transferred through a third party, which can be any network medium. Thus, there is a need for developing a robust encryption algorithm. These algorithms improve the security of the ongoing pictures by compromising the nature of the picture and utilizing complex calculations. Algorithms that work on the nature of the picture by utilizing complex cycles, for example, error diffusion, halftoning, wavelet transform, and dithering, lead to time complexity. Thus, a compact and efficient cryptographic algorithm is proposed with fewer mathematical computations that ensure the secured transmission and reception of medical images through the medium using Significant Visual Cryptography (SVC). In SVC, initially, the quality of the secret images (SI) is improved by using the Error Abatement Technique (EAT). The output of EAT is used to generate random share values, which are then implanted in cover pictures. The shares that are transmitted do not reveal the secret information present in the original image because of the steganography features involved in this technique. The integrated check value (ICV) is calculated over the region of interest (ROI) at the encryption and decryption sides to provide additional security. Quality and security analyses have been carried out to ensure the robustness of the algorithm. The detailed study proved that the proposed algorithm beat the constraints of the current calculations. The concept of checking the integrity value and steganography features enhanced the effectiveness of the algorithm.