Securing Medical Information Transmission Between IoT Devices: An Innovative Hybrid Encryption Scheme Based on Quantum Walk, DNA Encoding, and Chaos

Abstract

The healthcare industry has undergone a transformation due to the widespread use of advanced communication technologies and wireless sensor networks such as the Internet of Medical Things (IoMT), Health Information Exchange Technology (HIET), Internet of Healthcare Things (IoHT) and Health IoT (HIoT). These technologies have led to an increase in the transmission of medical data, particularly medical imaging data, over various wireless communication channels. However, transmitting high-quality color medical images over insecure internet channels like the Internet and communication networks like 5G presents significant security risks that could threaten patients’ data privacy. Furthermore, this process can also burden the limited bandwidth of the communication channel, leading to delayed data transmission. To address security concerns in healthcare data, researchers have focused a lot of attention on medical image encryption as a means of protecting patient data. This paper presents a color image encryption scheme that integrates multiple encryption techniques, including alternate quantum random walks, controlled Rubik’s Cube transformations, and the integration of the Elliptic Curve Cryptosystem with Hill Cipher (ECCHC). The proposed scheme divides various plaintext images by creating a regular cube by layering planes of a fixed size. Each plane is rotated in an anticlockwise direction, followed by row, column and face swapping, and then DNA encoding is performed. The image cube encoded with DNA is combined with the chaotic cube through DNA addition, and a couple of random DNA sequences are chosen for DNA mutation. After undergoing DNA mutation, the encoded cube is then decoded using DNA. The proposed method has the theoretical capability of encrypting 2D images of unlimited size and number by utilizing an infinitely large cube. The proposed image encryption scheme has been rigorously tested through various experimental simulations and cyberattack analysis, which shows the efficiency and reliability of the proposed encryption scheme.