A blind steganography approach for hiding privacy details in images of digital imaging and communications in medicine using QR code

Abstract

This study aims to hide patient’s privacy details of digital imaging and communications in medicine (DICOM) files using the quick response (QR) code images with the same size using steganographic technique. The proposed method is based on the properties of the discrete cosine transform (DCT) of the DICOM images to embed a QR code image. The proposed method includes two parts: data embedding and extraction process. Moreover, the stego DICOM image could be blindly used to produce the embedded QR code image without the existence of the original DICOM image. The performances of proposed method were evaluated using the metrics of the peak signal to noise ratio (PSNR), the structural similarity index (SSIM), the universal quality index (UQI), the correlation coefficient (R) and the bit error rate (BER) values. The experimental results scored a high PSNR after the embedding process by embedding a QR code image into the DICOM image with the same size.