ABSTRACT
To enhance the security and ensure privacy of a larger data set of electronic medical images (EMI) each of which varies in properties while they are in storage, or before being transmitted, and accessed through real-time applications has become a challenging issue. Stored EMI should be easily accessible anytime while ensuring secrecy and privacy. The proposed hybrid method (PHM) is a combination of steganography with cryptography which ensures security while reducing the computational time so that they can secure EMI in real time. Initially, in PHM the EMI is hidden using edge-based steganography and then applied with three-layered cryptography. The proposed hybrid method is implemented using MATLAB. The efficiency metrics applied are: total time which combines steganography with encryption time, decrypt and de-steganography time thus overall processing time, Peak Signal to Noise Ratio (PSNR), Mean Square Error (MSE), Kullback-Leibler Divergence (KLD), Root Mean Square Error (RMSE), Bit Error Rate (BER), etc. This article aims to secure a larger data set of 5856 EMI images of varying dimensions sized 1.16 GB by implementing the PHM which is a combination of cryptography and steganography. Further performance analysis demonstrates its efficiency and effectiveness in terms of reduced total processing time, encryption, and decryption time. Therefore, PHM can be used by hospitals to enhance security and privacy while providing real-time access to EMI. The PHM achieved is 0.99, R is 0.99, while better value for Kullback-Leibler Divergence (KLD), Root Mean Square Error (RMSE), Bit Error Rate (BER), Universal Average Changed Intensity (UACI), Number of Changing Pixel Rate (NPCR), etc. Hence proving its statistical relevance.
