Hybrid data encryption model integrating multi-objective adaptive genetic algorithm for secure medical data communication over cloud-based healthcare systems

Abstract

The exponential rise in the development of cloud computing environments in the healthcare field, the protection and confidentiality of the medical records become a primary concern for healthcare services applications. Today, health data stored in the cloud is highly confidential information concealed to avoid unauthorized access to protect the patient’s information. As cloud-based medical data transmission becomes more common, it receives growing attention from researchers and academics. Despite the potential for misuse, medical data transmitted through unreliable networks can be manipulated or compromised. The current cryptosystems alone are not sufficient to deal with these issues, and hence this paper introduces a new hybridization of data encryption model to shelter the diagnosis data in medical images. The proposed model is developed by combining either 2D Discrete Wavelet Transform 1 Level (2D-DWT-1 L) or 2D Discrete Wavelet Transform 2 Level (2D-DWT-2 L) steganography with the proposed hybrid encryption scheme. The hybrid encryption scheme is built by strategically applying Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) and Rivest–Shamir–Adleman (RSA) algorithms to secure diagnosis data to be embedded with the RGB channels of medical cover image. One of the key novelties is the use of an Adaptive Genetic Algorithm for Optimal Pixel Adjustment Process (AGA-OPAP) that enriches data hiding ability as well as imperceptibility features. To evaluate the efficiency of the proposed model, numerical tests are performed. The results show that the proposed algorithm is capable of safely transmitting medical data. Comparison of results is carried out concerning the datasets with the state-of-the-art algorithm. In terms of various statistical measures, the results showed the superiority of the proposed algorithm, such as peak signal to noise ratio (PSNR), correlation, structural content (SC), structure similarity (SSIM), entropy, histogram, NPCR, UACI and embedding capacity. The proposed model can also prevent attacks, such as steganalysis or RS attacks.