Hybrid Chaotic Method for Medical Images Ciphering

TL;DR

This paper introduces a hybrid chaotic algorithm-based method for medical image encryption, demonstrating improved security and statistical properties over traditional algorithms, specifically applied to retinal blood vessel images.

Contribution

It proposes two novel hybrid chaotic pseudo-random number generators that enhance image ciphering security and pass rigorous statistical tests.

Findings

Hybrid chaotic PRNGs pass NIST statistical tests.

Enhanced security for medical image encryption.

Application to retinal blood vessel images.

Abstract

Healthcare is an essential application of e-services, where for diagnostic testing, medical imaging acquiring, processing, analysis, storage, and protection are used. Image ciphering during storage and transmission over the networks used has seen implemented using many types of ciphering algorithms for security purpose. Current cyphering algorithms are classified into two types: traditional classical cryptography using standard algorithms (DES, AES, IDEA, RC5, RSA, ...) and chaos cryptography using continuous (Chau, Rossler, Lorenz, ...) or discreet (Logistics, Henon, ...) algorithms. The traditional algorithms have struggled to combat image data as compared to regular textual data. Whereas, the chaotic algorithms are more efficient for image ciphering. The Significance characteristics of chaos are its extreme sensitivity to initial conditions and algorithm parameters. In this paper, medical image security based on hybrid/mixed chaotic algorithms is proposed. The proposed method is implemented using MATLAB. Where the image of the Retina of the Eye to detect Blood Vessels is ciphered. The Pseudo-Random Numbers Generators (PRNGs) from the different chaotic algorithms are implemented, and their statistical properties are evaluated using the National Institute of Standards and Technology NIST and other statistical test-suits. Then, these algorithms are used to secure the data, where the statistical properties of the cipher-text are also tested. We propose two PRNGs to increase the complexity of the PRNGs and to allow many of the NIST statistical tests to be passed: one based on two-hybrid mixed chaotic logistic maps and one based on two-hybrid mixed chaotic Henon maps, where each chaotic algorithm runs side-by-side and starts with random initial conditions and parameters (encryption keys). The resulting hybrid PRNGs passed many of the NIST statistical test suits.