Reliable transmission and storage of medical images with patient information using error control codes

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) 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 is evaluated. It is elicited that coded systems can perform better than the uncoded systems.

提出了一种在噪声环境下对隐藏患者信息的医学图像进行紧凑存储和传输的新方法。这里采用数字水印技术将患者信息与医学图像交织在一起。患者信息包括文本数据和信号图，经过加密以防止数据被未经授权访问。使用最新的加密算法（Rijndael）对文本信息进行加密。信号图（心电图、脑电图、肌电图等）使用差分脉冲编码调制（DPCM）技术进行压缩。为了提高嵌入信息的鲁棒性，患者信息通过纠错码（ECC）里德 - 所罗门（RS）码进行编码。通过向嵌入图像添加椒盐（S&P）噪声来模拟噪声场景。针对图像的不同信噪比（SNR），评估文本数据的误码率（BER）和字符改变数量（NOCA）以及信号图的失真百分比（PDIST）。结果表明，编码系统比未编码系统性能更好。