DICOM PII De-Identification and Reversible Data Hiding.

Area of Science:

• Medical Imaging
• Information Security
• Data Privacy

Background:

• Sharing Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM) images is vital for remote medical diagnosis.
• DICOM images contain sensitive Personally Identifiable Information (PII), necessitating robust privacy protection measures.
• Existing methods may not adequately balance secure sharing with the preservation of diagnostic integrity.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop a privacy-preserving method for secure sharing of DICOM images.
• To ensure patient data confidentiality without compromising the diagnostic utility of medical images.
• To enable reversible embedding and extraction of sensitive information within DICOM files.

Main Methods:

• Implementation of pseudonymization techniques to replace patient-identifiable information with virtual data.
• Integration of encryption methods to enhance data confidentiality against unauthorized access.
• Utilization of reversible data hiding techniques for embedding processed sensitive information into images.

Main Results:

• Successfully replaced PII in DICOM images using pseudonymization and encryption.
• Demonstrated effective embedding of sensitive data using reversible data hiding.
• Confirmed that image diagnostic utility is maintained post-processing and data restoration.

Conclusions:

• The proposed method effectively achieves secure sharing of DICOM images while protecting patient privacy.
• Reversible data hiding ensures that sensitive information can be fully restored without data loss or diagnostic compromise.
• This approach offers a viable solution for compliant and secure medical image exchange in healthcare settings.