International Journal of Engineering and Technology

Security of medical images is an important issue, since applications such as Tele diagnosis exchange information over insecure communication channels. In this paper, Shamir secret sharing algorithm combined with DNA cryptography is proposed. The method involves the dispersion of medical image and Electronic Patient Record (EPR) into shadow images, aiming at better security characteristics. The EPR is hidden into the medical image using DNA hiding techniques. Huffman encoding is used to compress the DNA encoded secret image, which is then securely shared into shadow images using Shamir secret sharing. Then, the shadows are embedded into a host image using steganographic technique with modular operation. During reconstruction, at least t shadows are pooled to reconstruct the compressed secret image, which is again decoded using Huffman decoding to reveal the DNA encoded secret image. The medical image and EPR are separated using the reverse technique of DNA hiding. The simulation results and the security analysis prove that this method can hide longer EPR strings along with better confidentiality and authenticity. Better PSNR is achieved and the correlation co-efficient shows that this also has the ability of resisting various attacks.