scispace - formally typeset
Search or ask a question
Journal ArticleDOI

Wavelet-Based ECG Steganography for Protecting Patient Confidential Information in Point-of-Care Systems

21 May 2013-IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering (IEEE)-Vol. 60, Iss: 12, pp 3322-3330
TL;DR: A wavelet-based steganography technique has been introduced which combines encryption and scrambling technique to protect patient confidential data and it is found that the proposed technique provides high-security protection for patients data with low distortion and ECG data remain diagnosable after watermarking.
Abstract: With the growing number of aging population and a significant portion of that suffering from cardiac diseases, it is conceivable that remote ECG patient monitoring systems are expected to be widely used as point-of-care (PoC) applications in hospitals around the world. Therefore, huge amount of ECG signal collected by body sensor networks from remote patients at homes will be transmitted along with other physiological readings such as blood pressure, temperature, glucose level, etc., and diagnosed by those remote patient monitoring systems. It is utterly important that patient confidentiality is protected while data are being transmitted over the public network as well as when they are stored in hospital servers used by remote monitoring systems. In this paper, a wavelet-based steganography technique has been introduced which combines encryption and scrambling technique to protect patient confidential data. The proposed method allows ECG signal to hide its corresponding patient confidential data and other physiological information thus guaranteeing the integration between ECG and the rest. To evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed technique on the ECG signal, two distortion measurement metrics have been used: the percentage residual difference and the wavelet weighted PRD. It is found that the proposed technique provides high-security protection for patients data with low (less than 1%) distortion and ECG data remain diagnosable after watermarking (i.e., hiding patient confidential data) and as well as after watermarks (i.e., hidden data) are removed from the watermarked data.
Citations
More filters
Journal ArticleDOI
24 Mar 2020-Sensors
TL;DR: A generic architectural model for ECG monitoring systems is proposed, an extensive analysis of ECG Monitoring systems’ value chain is conducted, and a thorough review of the relevant literature, classified against the experts’ taxonomy, is presented, highlighting challenges and current trends.
Abstract: Health monitoring and its related technologies is an attractive research area. The electrocardiogram (ECG) has always been a popular measurement scheme to assess and diagnose cardiovascular diseases (CVDs). The number of ECG monitoring systems in the literature is expanding exponentially. Hence, it is very hard for researchers and healthcare experts to choose, compare, and evaluate systems that serve their needs and fulfill the monitoring requirements. This accentuates the need for a verified reference guiding the design, classification, and analysis of ECG monitoring systems, serving both researchers and professionals in the field. In this paper, we propose a comprehensive, expert-verified taxonomy of ECG monitoring systems and conduct an extensive, systematic review of the literature. This provides evidence-based support for critically understanding ECG monitoring systems’ components, contexts, features, and challenges. Hence, a generic architectural model for ECG monitoring systems is proposed, an extensive analysis of ECG monitoring systems’ value chain is conducted, and a thorough review of the relevant literature, classified against the experts’ taxonomy, is presented, highlighting challenges and current trends. Finally, we identify key challenges and emphasize the importance of smart monitoring systems that leverage new technologies, including deep learning, artificial intelligence (AI), Big Data and Internet of Things (IoT), to provide efficient, cost-aware, and fully connected monitoring systems.

139 citations

Posted Content
TL;DR: Ye and Huang as discussed by the authors proposed an image encryption algorithm based on electrocardiography (ECG) signals to generate the initial key for a chaotic system and applied an autoblocking method to divide a plain image into blocks of certain sizes suitable for subsequent encryption.
Abstract: This paper analyzes the security of an image encryption algorithm proposed by Ye and Huang [\textit{IEEE MultiMedia}, vol. 23, pp. 64-71, 2016]. The Ye-Huang algorithm uses electrocardiography (ECG) signals to generate the initial key for a chaotic system and applies an autoblocking method to divide a plain image into blocks of certain sizes suitable for subsequent encryption. The designers claimed that the proposed algorithm is "strong and flexible enough for practical applications". In this paper, we perform a thorough analysis of their algorithm from the view point of modern cryptography. We find it is vulnerable to the known plaintext attack: based on one pair of a known plain-image and its corresponding cipher-image, an adversary is able to derive a mask image, which can be used as an equivalent secret key to successfully decrypt other cipher-images encrypted under the same key with a non-negligible probability of 1/256. Using this as a typical counterexample, we summarize security defects in the design of the Ye-Huang algorithm. The lessons are generally applicable to many other image encryption schemes.

139 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: An approach that uses discrete wavelet transform to decompose signals and singular value decomposition (SVD) to embed the secret information into the decomposed ECG signal and the observations validate that HH is the ideal sub-band to hide data.
Abstract: ECG Steganography provides secured transmission of secret information such as patient personal information through ECG signals. This paper proposes an approach that uses discrete wavelet transform to decompose signals and singular value decomposition (SVD) to embed the secret information into the decomposed ECG signal. The novelty of the proposed method is to embed the watermark using SVD into the two dimensional (2D) ECG image. The embedding of secret information in a selected sub band of the decomposed ECG is achieved by replacing the singular values of the decomposed cover image by the singular values of the secret data. The performance assessment of the proposed approach allows understanding the suitable sub-band to hide secret data and the signal degradation that will affect diagnosability. Performance is measured using metrics like Kullback---Leibler divergence (KL), percentage residual difference (PRD), peak signal to noise ratio (PSNR) and bit error rate (BER). A dynamic location selection approach for embedding the singular values is also discussed. The proposed approach is demonstrated on a MIT-BIH database and the observations validate that HH is the ideal sub-band to hide data. It is also observed that the signal degradation (less than 0.6 %) is very less in the proposed approach even with the secret data being as large as the sub band size. So, it does not affect the diagnosability and is reliable to transmit patient information.

72 citations


Cites background or methods from "Wavelet-Based ECG Steganography for..."

  • ...The classical metrics [8, 25, 39] that are used to compare include: PSNR, PRD and BER The metrics are defined by: PSNR is the ratio of maximum amplitude of the cover ECG signal to the mean squared deviation between the two signals....

    [...]

  • ...Ibaida and Khalil [25] achieve this by using a weighted PRD for which the weights are obtained from previous work done by Al-Fahoum [41]....

    [...]

  • ...Wavelet based ECG Steganography is achieved by using the combination of encryption and scrambling technique in [25]....

    [...]

  • ...Here we have used Daubechies 4 wavelet [25]....

    [...]

  • ...BER is the ratio between the extracted secret information and the original secret information which gives the measure of data loss [25]....

    [...]

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The novelty of the proposed approach is to use CACO in ECG Steganography, to identify Multiple Scaling Factors (MSFs) that will provide a better tradeoff compared to uniform Single Scaling Factor (SSF) and the results validate that the tradeoff curve obtained through MSFs is better than the tradeoffs obtained for any SSF.
Abstract: ECG steganography is performed using DWT-SVD and quantization watermarking scheme.Imperceptibility-robustness tradeoff is investigated.Continuous Ant Colony Optimization provides optimized Multiple Scaling Factors.MSFs are superior to SSF in providing better imperceptibility-robustness tradeoff. ECG Steganography ensures protection of patient data when ECG signals embedded with patient data are transmitted over the internet. Steganography algorithms strive to recover the embedded patient data entirely and to minimize the deterioration in the cover signal caused by the embedding. This paper presents a Continuous Ant Colony Optimization (CACO) based ECG Steganography scheme using Discrete Wavelet Transform and Singular Value Decomposition. Quantization techniques allow embedding the patient data into the ECG signal. The scaling factor in the quantization techniques governs the tradeoff between imperceptibility and robustness. The novelty of the proposed approach is to use CACO in ECG Steganography, to identify Multiple Scaling Factors (MSFs) that will provide a better tradeoff compared to uniform Single Scaling Factor (SSF). The optimal MSFs significantly improve the performance of ECG steganography which is measured by metrics such as Peak Signal to Noise Ratio, Percentage Residual Difference, Kullback-Leibler distance and Bit Error Rate. Performance of the proposed approach is demonstrated on the MIT-BIH database and the results validate that the tradeoff curve obtained through MSFs is better than the tradeoff curve obtained for any SSF. The results also advocate appropriate SSFs for target imperceptibility or robustness.

66 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: An innovative technique that amalgamates existing data mining methods with smartly extracted features from vital sign correlations is developed and demonstrated its effectiveness on cloud platforms through comparative evaluations that showed its potential to become a new tool for predictive healthcare.

65 citations

References
More filters
Book
01 Jan 1995
TL;DR: The object of the book is to produce a general, comprehensive textbook that treats all the essential core areas of cryptography.
Abstract: From the Publisher: The object of the book is to produce a general, comprehensive textbook that treats all the essential core areas of cryptography.

3,545 citations


"Wavelet-Based ECG Steganography for..." refers background in this paper

  • ...2 shows an example of what information could be stored inside the ECG signal [14]....

    [...]

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: A novel patient-centric framework and a suite of mechanisms for data access control to PHRs stored in semitrusted servers are proposed and a high degree of patient privacy is guaranteed simultaneously by exploiting multiauthority ABE.
Abstract: Personal health record (PHR) is an emerging patient-centric model of health information exchange, which is often outsourced to be stored at a third party, such as cloud providers. However, there have been wide privacy concerns as personal health information could be exposed to those third party servers and to unauthorized parties. To assure the patients' control over access to their own PHRs, it is a promising method to encrypt the PHRs before outsourcing. Yet, issues such as risks of privacy exposure, scalability in key management, flexible access, and efficient user revocation, have remained the most important challenges toward achieving fine-grained, cryptographically enforced data access control. In this paper, we propose a novel patient-centric framework and a suite of mechanisms for data access control to PHRs stored in semitrusted servers. To achieve fine-grained and scalable data access control for PHRs, we leverage attribute-based encryption (ABE) techniques to encrypt each patient's PHR file. Different from previous works in secure data outsourcing, we focus on the multiple data owner scenario, and divide the users in the PHR system into multiple security domains that greatly reduces the key management complexity for owners and users. A high degree of patient privacy is guaranteed simultaneously by exploiting multiauthority ABE. Our scheme also enables dynamic modification of access policies or file attributes, supports efficient on-demand user/attribute revocation and break-glass access under emergency scenarios. Extensive analytical and experimental results are presented which show the security, scalability, and efficiency of our proposed scheme.

1,057 citations


"Wavelet-Based ECG Steganography for..." refers background in this paper

  • ...There are many approaches to secure patient sensitive data [2], [7], [9], [10]....

    [...]

BookDOI
23 Feb 2000
TL;DR: Poularikas et al. as discussed by the authors proposed the Hartley Transform, Kraig J. Olejniczak, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville Laplace Transforms, Samuel Seely (deceased), Westbrook, Connecticut The Z-Transform, Alexander D. Poularis et al., University of Alabama in Huntsville Hilbert Transform, Stefan L. Hahn, Warsaw University of Technology Radon and Abel Transforms.
Abstract: Signals and Systems, Alexander D. Poularikas, University of Alabama in Huntsville Fourier Transforms, Kenneth B. Howell, University of Alabama in Huntsville Sine and Cosine Transforms, Pat Yip, McMaster University, Ontario The Hartley Transform, Kraig J. Olejniczak, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville Laplace Transforms, Samuel Seely (deceased), Westbrook, Connecticut The Z-Transform, Alexander D. Poularikas, University of Alabama in Huntsville Hilbert Transforms, Stefan L. Hahn, Warsaw University of Technology Radon and Abel Transforms, Stanley Deans, University of South Florida The Hankel Transform, Robert Piessens , Katholieke Universieit Leuven, Belgium Wavelet Transform, Yunlong Sheng, Laval University, Quebec The Mellin Transform, Jacqueline Bertrand, Pierre Bertrand, Universite de Paris VII, and Jean-Philippe Ovarlez, ONERA/DES, France Mixed Time-Frequency Signal Transformations, G. Faye Boudreaux-Bartels, University of Rhode Island Fractional Fourier Transforms, Dr. Mustafa Abushagur, University of Alabama in Huntsvill, Dr. Ahmed M. Almanasrah, Photronix, Malaysia The Lapped Transforms, Ricardo L. de Queiroz, Xerox Corporation The Discrete Time and the Discrete Transforms, Alexander D. Poularikas, University of Alabama in Huntsville Discrete Time and the Discrete Transforms, Alexander D. Poularikas, University of Alabama in Huntsville Appendices, Alexander D. Poularikas, University of Alabama in Huntsville Index

776 citations


"Wavelet-Based ECG Steganography for..." refers background in this paper

  • ...C represents the coefficients which is a function of scale and position parameters [15]....

    [...]

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: A new method of digital Steganography, entitled spread spectrum image steganography (SSIS), which hides and recovers a message of substantial length within digital imagery while maintaining the original image size and dynamic range.
Abstract: We present a new method of digital steganography, entitled spread spectrum image steganography (SSIS). Steganography, which means "covered writing" in Greek, is the science of communicating in a hidden manner. Following a discussion of steganographic communication theory and review of existing techniques, the new method, SSIS, is introduced. This system hides and recovers a message of substantial length within digital imagery while maintaining the original image size and dynamic range. The hidden message can be recovered using appropriate keys without any knowledge of the original image. Image restoration, error-control coding, and techniques similar to spread spectrum are described, and the performance of the system is illustrated. A message embedded by this method can be in the form of text, imagery, or any other digital signal. Applications for such a data-hiding scheme include in-band captioning, covert communication, image tamperproofing, authentication, embedded control, and revision tracking.

742 citations


"Wavelet-Based ECG Steganography for..." refers background in this paper

  • ...Steganography is the art of hiding secret information inside another type of data called host data [8]....

    [...]

Journal ArticleDOI
01 Dec 2004
TL;DR: The results show that the wireless PDA model is superior to the currently used monitors both in mobility and in usability, and is, therefore, better suited to patient transport.
Abstract: This paper proposes a mobile patient monitoring system, which integrates current personal digital assistant (PDA) technology and wireless local area network (WLAN) technology. At the patient's location, a wireless PDA-based monitor is used to acquire continuously the patient's vital signs, including heart rate, three-lead electrocardiography, and SpO/sub 2/. Through the WLAN, the patient's biosignals can be transmitted in real-time to a remote central management unit, and authorized medical staffs can access the data and the case history of the patient, either by the central management unit or the wireless devices. A prototype of this system has been developed and implemented. The system has been evaluated by technical verification, clinical test, and user survey. The evaluation of performance yields a high degree of satisfaction (mean=4.64, standard deviation-SD=0.53 in a five-point Likert scale) of users who used the PDA-based system for intrahospital transport. The results also show that the wireless PDA model is superior to the currently used monitors both in mobility and in usability, and is, therefore, better suited to patient transport.

369 citations


"Wavelet-Based ECG Steganography for..." refers background in this paper

  • ...Accordingly, to reduce the medical labor cost, the use of remote healthcare monitoring systems and point-of-care (PoC) technologies have become popular [1], [2]....

    [...]