Secure Gray code-based reversible data hiding scheme in radiographic images

摘要

Transmitting medical information through a network for the purpose of tele-diagnosis involves greater risk of losing confidentiality and integrity of the information being transmitted. This paper presents a scheme that ensures reversibility of the cover image and also makes it suitable for the field of telemedicine. The methodology uses cryptographic and the steganographic methods. The proposed work decreases the overhead by reducing the size of the auxiliary data to be embedded which is used to achieve the reversibility of the cover image. The proposed method also improves security of the data and enhances the image quality. The algorithm yields a reversible data hiding (RDH) scheme based on pixel value ordering (PVO). The methodology differs from other basic schemes as it uses Gray code instead of ordinary binary codes. It naturally suits for medical steganography as the carrier image can be reconstructed after extraction of the secret data and also the distortion caused due to embedding is very less. The method is also robust as one time pad cryptographic technique is used to generate the key.