Encryption of DICOM medical images to increase security and prevent changes and unauthorized access to these images

Subject Areas : Information Technology in Engineering Design (ITED) Journal

Mohammad Soltani ¹ , Hassan Shakeri ^{2 *} , Mahboobeh Houshmand ³

1 -
2 - Department of Computer Engineering, Mashhad Branch, Islamic Azad University, Mashhad, Iran
3 - Department of Computer Engineering, Mashhad Branch, Islamic Azad University, Mashhad, Iran

Received: 2025-05-07 Accepted : 2025-07-09 Published : 2025-09-05

Keywords: Security, DICOM, Encryption using 3D logistics map, Patient biometric information, Digital signature,

Abstract :

Medical information, including electronic health records, is transmitted over an open network. One of the technologies used to protect medical images is encryption. In this paper, an efficient hybrid encryption algorithm is proposed for the security of digital images and medical communications in the healthcare field. The proposed algorithm uses an artificial intelligence algorithm and a 3D logistic map encryption algorithm. In this algorithm, before receiving the patient's DICOM image, the patient's biometric information is first evaluated by artificial intelligence, and if the received biometric information is correct, the DICOM image is encrypted using the 3D logistic map encryption algorithm in the next steps. In addition, to increase security, in the encryption of each DICOM image, all encryption and decryption keys in all stages depend on the patient's biometric information, such as fingerprint or iris. Based on the results obtained from the proposed algorithm, the maximum entropy is 7.9998, the NPCR value is 99.98%, the UACI value is 33.52%, the key space is more than 10⁸⁹, and the correlation is non-zero. Also, the use of patient biometric information indicates the high resistance of the algorithm against brute force attacks.

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