A steganographic approach for secure communication of medical images based on the DCT-SVD and the compressed sensing (CS) theory

ABSTRACT

In this paper, a hybrid approach based on cryptography and steganography is proposed for the security of medical image over an open communication channel. In this approach, medical image information is embedded using discrete cosine transform (DCT)-singular value decomposition (SVD)-based embedding process. The medical image is encrypted using CS encryption before embedding into the standard image. This encrypted medical image is inserted into the singular values of DCT coefficients of the standard image to get the stego image. The experimental results show that the encrypted medical image is successfully extracted from the stego image under various image processing attacks at recovering side. The result analysis also shows improved imperceptibility of the stego image with a peak signal-to-noise ratio value above 60 dB for all types of medical images under consideration. Furthermore, the computation time of proposed approach is less than that of existing approaches.

KEYWORDS:

• Discrete cosine transform (DCT)
• compressive sensing (CS)
• encryption
• medical image security
• steganography
• singular value decomposition (SVD)
• wavelet basis matrix

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Images

The images contained within Figures 4, 5, 6 and 9 are available for free at the following online digital repositories:

The University of South Carolina SIPI Image Database: http://sipi.usc.edu/database/database.php

The National Library of Medicine presents MedPix: https://medpix.nlm.nih.gov/home

Notes on contributors

Rohit Thanki obtained his Ph.D. in Electronics and Communication Engineering from C. U. Shah University, Gujarat, India in 2017. He obtained B.E. and M.E. in Electronics and Communication Engineering in 2008 and 2010, respectively. His area of research interest is Digital Watermarking, Biometrics System, Security, Compressive Sensing, and Image Processing.

Surekha Borra obtained her Ph.D. in Electronics and Communication Engineering in 2015. She is a professor in E. C. E Department, K. S. Institute of Technology, Bangalore, India. Her areas of research include Digital Watermarking, Biometrics Security, Machine Learning, Video Analytics, and Image Processing.

Vedvyas Dwivedi obtained his Ph.D. in Electronics and Communication Engineering in 2010. He is the vice-chancellor (I/C), C. U. Shah University, Wadhwan City, India. His main research interest is Microwave Engineering with special focus on RF and Mobile Antenna Design, Wireless Sensor Design, Energy-related Problems, and Image Processing.

Komal Borisagar obtained her Ph.D. in Electronics and Communication Engineering in 2012. She is an associate professor, E. C. Department, Atmiya Institute of Technology & Science, Rajkot. Her area of research interest is Digital Watermarking, Medical Image Compression, Wireless Communication, Speech Processing, and Image Processing.

ORCID

Rohit Thanki http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0645-6266

Vedvyas Dwivedi http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7785-7238