Secured Medical Images - a Chaotic Pixel Scrambling Approach

Abstract

In this paper, a cryptosystem is proposed to encrypt 16-bit monochrome DICOM image using enhanced chaotic economic map. A new enhanced chaotic economic map (ECEM) is designed from the chaotic economic map which has better bifurcation nature and positive Lyapunov exponent values. In order to improve the sternness of the encryption algorithm, the enhanced chaotic map is employed to generate the pixel permutation, masking, and swapping sequences. The substitution operation is introduced in-between the standard permutation and diffusion operations. The robustness of the proposed image encryption algorithm is measured by various analyses such as histogram, key sensitivity, key space, number of pixel change rate (NPCR), unified average change intensity (UACI), information entropy and correlation coefficient. The results of the security analyses are compared with existing algorithms to validate that the proposed algorithm is better in terms of larger key space to resist brute force attacks and other common attacks on encryption.

Keywords: Chaotic map; Confusion; Diffusion; Encryption; Patient privacy; eHealth.