A robust ECG steganography method

ECG steganography hides patient's confidential data into their Electrocardiogram during transmission/storage of medical records, in order to ensure protection of patient privacy. Efficiency of a steganography method can be estimated using imperceptibility and robustness of hidden data which are estimated using Peak Signal to Noise Ratio and Bit Error Rate metrics, respectively. In this research work, an attempt has been made to perform ECG steganography using Discrete Wavelet Transform - Singular Value Decomposition method with additive quantization scheme. A vital challenge in steganography is that affects the imperceptibility and robustness of watermark. The novelty of proposed work is that improves the robustness of hidden data using BCH error-correcting codes. MIT-BIH database is used to evaluate the performance of the proposed ECG steganography method. It is observed that the robustness of hidden data is improved owing to BCH codes.