Privacy Preserving of Online Digital Physiological Signals using Reversible Steganography
Journal
Computer Methods and Programs in Biomedicine
Journal Volume
151
Pages
43701
Date Issued
2017
Author(s)
Abstract
Background and objective Physiological signals such as electrocardiograms (ECG) and electromyograms (EMG) are widely used to diagnose diseases. Presently, the Internet offers numerous cloud storage services which enable digital physiological signals to be uploaded for convenient access and use. Numerous online databases of medical signals have been built. The data in them must be processed in a manner that preserves patients’ confidentiality. Methods A reversible error-correcting-coding strategy will be adopted to transform digital physiological signals into a new bit-stream that uses a matrix in which is embedded the Hamming code to pass secret messages or private information. The shared keys are the matrix and the version of the Hamming code. Results An online open database, the MIT-BIH arrhythmia database, was used to test the proposed algorithms. The time-complexity, capacity and robustness are evaluated. Comparisons of several evaluations subject to related work are also proposed. Conclusions This work proposes a reversible, low-payload steganographic scheme for preserving the privacy of physiological signals. An (n, m)-hamming code is used to insert (n ? m) secret bits into n bits of a cover signal. The number of embedded bits per modification is higher than in comparable methods, and the computational power is efficient and the scheme is secure. Unlike other Hamming-code based schemes, the proposed scheme is both reversible and blind. ? 2017 Elsevier B.V.
Subjects
Hamming code; Physiological signal; Privacy preserving; Steganography
SDGs
Other Subjects
Block codes; Data privacy; Database systems; Digital storage; Electrocardiography; Matrix algebra; Steganography; Cloud storage services; Error-correcting coding; Hamming code; Physiological signals; Preserving privacies; Privacy preserving; Reversible steganography; Steganographic schemes; Physiology; analytical error; Article; blind steganography; coding algorithm; comparative study; confidentiality; data base; evaluation study; Internet; online system; patient coding; patient information; privacy; reversible steganography; signal processing; algorithm; computer security; electrocardiography; human; information processing; software; Algorithms; Automatic Data Processing; Computer Security; Confidentiality; Electrocardiography; Humans; Software
Type
journal article