Securing DICOM format image archives using improved chaotic cat map method

Abstract

In healthcare industry, the patient's medical data plays a vital role because diagnosis of any ailments is done by using those data. The high volume of medical data leads to scalability and maintenance issues when using healthcare provider's onsite picture archiving and communication system (PACS) and network oriented storage system. Therefore a standard is needed for maintaining the medical data and for better diagnosis. Since the medical data reflects in a similar way to individuals personal information, secrecy should be maintained. Maintaining secrecy can be done by encrypting the data, but as medical data involves images and videos, traditional text based encryption/decryption schemes are not adequate for providing confidentiality. In this paper, we propose a method for securing the DICOM format medical archives by providing a better confidentiality. Our contribution in this method is of twofold: (1) Development of Chaotic based Arnold Cat Map for encryption/decryption of DICOM files and (2) Applying diffusion for those encrypted files. By applying this method, the secrecy of medical data is maintained and is tested with various DICOM format image archives by studying the following parameters i) PSNR-for quality of images and ii) Key-for security. © 2013 Springer-Verlag.