Open Access

ARTICLE

An Improved Steganographic Scheme Using the Contour Principle to Ensure the Privacy of Medical Data on Digital Images

R. Bala Krishnan¹, D. Yuvaraj², P. Suthanthira Devi³, Varghese S. Chooralil⁴, N. Rajesh Kumar¹, B. Karthikeyan⁵, G. Manikandan^5,*

1 Srinivasa Ramanujan Centre, SASTRA Deemed University, Kumbakonam, Tamil Nadu, India
2 Department of Computer Science, Cihan University–Duhok, Kurdistan Region, Iraq
3 Department of Information Technology, St. Joseph’s College of Engineering, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India
4 Department of Computer Science & Engineering, Rajagiri School of Engineering & Technology, Kakkanad, Kerala, India
5 School of Computing, SASTRA Deemed University, Thanjavur, Tamil Nadu, India

* Corresponding Author: G. Manikandan. Email:

Computer Systems Science and Engineering 2023, 46(2), 1563-1576. https://doi.org/10.32604/csse.2023.035307

Received 16 August 2022; Accepted 23 November 2022; Issue published 09 February 2023

Abstract

With the improvement of current online communication schemes, it is now possible to successfully distribute and transport secured digital Content via the communication channel at a faster transmission rate. Traditional steganography and cryptography concepts are used to achieve the goal of concealing secret Content on a media and encrypting it before transmission. Both of the techniques mentioned above aid in the confidentiality of feature content. The proposed approach concerns secret content embodiment in selected pixels on digital image layers such as Red, Green, and Blue. The private Content originated from a medical client and was forwarded to a medical practitioner on the server end through the internet. The K-Means clustering principle uses the contouring approach to frame the pixel clusters on the image layers. The content embodiment procedure is performed on the selected pixel groups of all layers of the image using the Least Significant Bit (LSB) substitution technique to build the secret Content embedded image known as the stego image, which is subsequently transmitted across the internet medium to the server end. The experimental results are computed using the inputs from “Open-Access Medical Image Repositories (aylward.org)” and demonstrate the scheme’s impudence as the Content concealing procedure progresses.

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Keywords

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