دانلود رایگان ترجمه مقاله الگوریتم های رمزنگاری برای انتقال تصویر پزشکی امن (نشریه IEEE 2015)

الگوریتم های رمزنگاری برای انتقال تصویر پزشکی امن

Crypto-based algorithms for secured medical image transmission

Abstract

Booming telemedicine applications makes it deemed necessary to provide security services for such applications. The algorithms proposed in this field can be grouped into three classes: watermarking-based algorithms, crypto-based algorithms and hybrid algorithms. In this study, the authors propose two crypto-based algorithms capable of providing confidentiality, authenticity and integrity services to medical images exchanged in telemedicine applications. Strong cryptographic functions with internally generated symmetric keys and hash codes are used. The advanced encryption standard-Galois counter mode is used with the whirlpool hash function to provide confidentiality and authenticity, and the elliptic curve digital signature algorithm is used to provide authenticity and integrity. The proposed algorithms are based on the digital imaging and communication in medicine (DICOM) standard; however, unlike the standard, the algorithms provide confidentiality, authenticity and integrity for the header data, as well as for the pixel data of the DICOM images. Effectiveness of the proposed algorithms is evaluated and demonstrated through extensive experimentation using a benchmark set of DICOM images.

1 Introduction

Telemedicine is a modern medical care practice facilitated by the deployment of communication and information systems into the healthcare infrastructure. Numerous benefits are gained by telemedicine applications such as remote diagnosis and consultation among physicians, access to centralised medical archives and medical remote-distance learning [1, 2]. With these benefits, however, there are concomitant risks for medical data circulating in open networks, and thus being easily accessible by intruders [3, 4]. Therefore professionals working in the medical field have expressed their urgent need for secured schemes and methods capable of providing safe exchange of medical images and records.

The importance of a secured exchange of medical images has paved the way for international healthcare organisations to publish special standards that deal with medical data security issues. One such standard is the digital imaging and communication in medicine (DICOM) standard [5, 6]. The standard provides guidelines and mechanisms to healthcare professionals and entities to achieve three telemedicine security services: confidentiality, authenticity and integrity [7]. The confidentiality service is necessary to prevent illegal access to the transmitted images, whereas the integrity and authenticity services are needed to verify ownership and detect tampering of the received images. Currently, cryptography and digital watermarking technologies are used to implement schemes and algorithms capable of providing the required security services to telemedicine applications.

The crypto-based approach for achieving security in the medical information exchange systems is based on the application of cryptographic functions such as symmetric encryption, hashing and digital signatures [8]. Symmetric encryption provides confidentiality for the transmitted images using block ciphers and stream ciphers, whereas hashing and digital signatures verify authenticity and strict integrity of the received images. On the other hand, digital image watermarking is the practice of hiding secret data into digital medical images [9, 10]. Confidentiality is achieved by embedding the patient’s private data as robust watermarks, whereas authenticity and integrity are achieved by hiding robust and fragile watermarks into the medical images [11]. Although the embedded watermarks are almost imperceptible to the human eye, the very idea of embedding, and thus degrading the medical image, may induce severe resistance to its adoption by medical standards and professionals.

In this paper, we propose two crypto-based algorithms capable of providing confidentiality and verifying authenticity and integrity of DICOM images. Unlike the DICOM standard and other crypto-based schemes, the proposed algorithms provide confidentiality, authenticity and integrity for both constitutes of the DICOM images: the header data and the pixel data. Strong cryptographic functions with externally and internally generated symmetric keys and hash codes are used in the implementation of the algorithms. The remaining of the paper is organised as follows. Section 2 describes recent secured telemedicine schemes and algorithms relevant to the proposed algorithms. The cryptographic functions used in the implementation of the algorithms are described in Section 3. The proposed algorithms are described in Section 4, and their performance results are presented and analysed in Section 5. Discussion and conclusions are given in Section 6.