Medical image security with cheater identification using secret sharing scheme

Abstract

The progress in the field of information and communication technology has brought about quick and efficient transfer of textual as well as multimedia data . However, the growth of technology has also provided new ways for unauthorized access and illegal modifications of data, thereby, affecting data security. Secure data transmission is a necessity, especially in medical and legal fields. Doctors need to be convinced about the legitimacy of the medical images as well as associated health records they receive, especially in networking applications such as telediagnosis, teleconsultation,telesurgery etc. Furthermore, medical images should not be discernible to malignant agents with evil intentions on patient’s health. This thesis proposes a (k,n) secret sharing scheme for secure transfer of medical images and related electronic patient records (EPR) to a team of doctors through public insecure channels. The scheme prevents unauthorized access and detects illegal tampering of transmitted images and records. The scheme also considers the presence of a deceiver among the group of participants and includes techniques to detect any deception from the participant doctors and uniquely identify the deceiver. Furthermore, the scheme includes procedures to prevent the unauthorized release of medical image by any of the participating doctors. Simulation results shows that the proposed scheme satisfies all the security features discussed above.