Reliable and robust transmission and storage of medical images with patient information

A new method for compact storage and transmission of medical images with concealed patient information in noisy environment is evinced. Digital Watermarking is the technique adapted here for interleaving patient information with medical images. The patient information, which comprises of text data and signal graph, is encrypted to prevent unauthorized access of data. The latest encryption algorithm (Rijndael) is used for encrypting the text information. Signal graphs (ECG, EEG EMG etc.) are compressed using DPCM technique. To enhance the robustness of the embedded information, the patient information is coded by Error Correcting Codes (ECC) such as (7,4) Hamming, Bose-Chaudhuri-Hocquenghem (BCH) and Reed Solomon (RS) codes. The noisy scenario is simulated by adding salt and pepper (S&P) noise to the embedded image. For different Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR) of the image, Bit Error Rate (BER) and Number of Character Altered (NOCA) for text data and percentage distortion (PDIST) for the signal graph are evaluated. The performance comparison based on the above parameters is conducted for three types of ECC. It is elicited that coded systems can perform better than the uncoded systems.