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An improved ROI-based reversible data hiding scheme completely separable applied to encrypted medical images

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Abstract

To protect the privacy of medical images, as well as the patient personal information associated with it, this paper proposes a reversible data hiding scheme for encrypted medical images; whose reversibility is completely separable by allowing additional data extraction and restoration of the region of interest both from the plaintext and the cipher domain of medical images. To this purpose, the pixels in the image are reordered according to the region of interest selected by the content owner and encrypted with a block cipher in counter mode; to subsequently embed additional data into the encrypted image, such as the patient’s personal information and clinical diagnosis, via less significant bit substitution. Finally, according to the proper key, a legitimate receiver can perform the following tasks: a) Obtain a high visual quality approximate image with respect to the original version by directly decrypting the cryptogram with the encryption key, b) With the data hiding key, the embedded data can be extracted free of any error, either from the encrypted image or its approximate version respectively, and c) In case of having both keys, the embedded data can be extracted and the recovered image with the region of interest fully restored can be obtained without loss of information. The proposed method is suitable for applications where the information security and the management of medical images need to be ensured in terms of reliability, integrity, and confidentiality. Comparison performance with the state of the art is performed, in terms of imperceptibility, capacity and steganalysis.

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Acknowledgments

Authors thank the Instituto Politecnico Nacional (IPN) as well as the Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnologia de Mexico (CONACYT) by the support provided during the realization of this research.

Funding

This research was supported by Instituto Politecnico Nacional (IPN) as well as the Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnologia (CONACYT) of Mexico.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Instituto Politecnico Nacional SEPI ESIME Culhuacan, Avenida Santa Ana 1000, San Francisco Culhuacan, CTM V, Ciudad de Mexico, CDMX, C.P. 04260, Coyoacan, Mexico

    David Mata-Mendoza, Diana Nuñez-Ramirez, Manuel Cedillo-Hernandez & Mariko Nakano-Miyatake

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  1. David Mata-Mendoza
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  2. Diana Nuñez-Ramirez
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  3. Manuel Cedillo-Hernandez
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  4. Mariko Nakano-Miyatake
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Manuel Cedillo-Hernandez.

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Informed consent

All patients data in DICOM images used in this research was anonymized considering the DICOM standard in https://www.dicomstandard.org/using/security. In this way, none patients data appears in all content of the paper.

Research involving human participants and/or animals

This research not involving human participants and/or animals.

Conflicts of interest

The authors declare that they have no potential conflicts of interest that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

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Mata-Mendoza, D., Nuñez-Ramirez, D., Cedillo-Hernandez, M. et al. An improved ROI-based reversible data hiding scheme completely separable applied to encrypted medical images. Health Technol. 11, 835–850 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12553-021-00562-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12553-021-00562-6

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