Spatial Cryptographic and Watermarking Technique for Authentication and Security of Medical Images in a Cloud Based Health Information Systems

Abstract

Cloud computing has provided tremendous opportunities for a lot of organizations in cutting operating cost, making data available to distributed units, provision of easy interoperability etc. Health information systems forms a critical parts of one’s countries information technology infrastructure due to the sensitivity and nature of data processed over time with regards treatment history, medical records etc. And medical images form dominant part of the sensitive patient data. Hence privacy and security needs to be guaranteed for such images stored in the cloud. Most of the access security and encryption approaches are left for the cloud owners to manage and these poses a lot of insecurity if the system is compromised. In our wok, we proposed a hybrid spatial cryptographic and watermarking technique for authentication and security of medical images before storage in the cloud. Due to the sensitive nature of medical images, we were able to achieve full recoverability of the plain image after decryption and dewatermarking without pixel loss. Our results showed to be very effective and reliable for fully recoverable images.