A hybrid encryption framework leveraging quantum and classical cryptography for secure transmission of medical images in IoT-based telemedicine networks

Arslan Shafique; Syed Ali Atif Naqvi; Ali Raza; Masoud Ghalaii; Panagiotis Papanastasiou; Julie McCann; Qammer H Abbasi; Muhammad Ali Imran

doi:10.1038/s41598-024-82256-3

A hybrid encryption framework leveraging quantum and classical cryptography for secure transmission of medical images in IoT-based telemedicine networks

Sci Rep. 2024 Dec 28;14(1):31054. doi: 10.1038/s41598-024-82256-3.

Authors

Arslan Shafique¹, Syed Ali Atif Naqvi², Ali Raza², Masoud Ghalaii³, Panagiotis Papanastasiou⁴, Julie McCann⁵, Qammer H Abbasi², Muhammad Ali Imran²

Affiliations

¹ School of Electronic and Nanoscale Engineering, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, G12 8QQ, UK. [email protected].
² School of Electronic and Nanoscale Engineering, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, G12 8QQ, UK.
³ School of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, University of Leeds, Leeds, LS2 9JT, UK.
⁴ Department of Computer Science, University of York, York, YO10 5DD, UK.
⁵ Department of Computing, Imperial College, London, SW7 2AZ, UK.

Abstract

In the era of the Internet of Things (IoT), the transmission of medical reports in the form of scan images for collaborative diagnosis is vital for any telemedicine network. In this context, ensuring secure transmission and communication is necessary to protect medical data to maintain privacy. To address such privacy concerns and secure medical images against cyberattacks, this research presents a robust hybrid encryption framework that integrates quantum, and classical cryptographic methods. The proposed framework not only secure medical data against cyber threats but also protects the secret security keys. Initially, a Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) is employed to generate a shared key, which is then used to secure the symmetric keys via One-Time Pad (OTP) encryption. Next, bit-planes are extracted from each color component. The rows and columns of the extracted bit-planes are scrambled using random sequences which are generated by a 6D hyperchaotic Chen system and the Ikeda map. To further increase confusion in the original data, multiple-step pixel scrambling operations such as pixel shuffling, pixel value shuffling, and rotational and flipping operations are implemented. After the confusion phase, a combination of affine transformations with non-linear functions, Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) with complex modulation, Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT) with random phase modulation, bilinear transformation, and nonlinear polynomial mapping are employed to create diffusion in the scrambled components. These multiple encryption operations aim to maximize randomness in the final ciphertext image. Additionally, to reduce computational complexity, only the Most Significant Bit-Planes (MSBs) are encrypted, as they contain more than 94% of the plaintext information. Several experimental results and analyses are conducted to assess the proposed encryption framework, including entropy analysis, key sensitivity analysis, correlation analysis lossless analysis, and histogram analysis. Furthermore, the framework is tested against various cyberattacks such as brute-force attacks, clipping attacks, and noise attacks on the ciphertext images, to demonstrate its resilience against such threats.