Confusion and diffusion on FPGA — Onchip solution for medical image security

In today's scenario, securing the personal medical records needs a special attention owing to the mammoth increase of electronic patient record processing. Most of the reported works on medical data security have been implemented on software platform. In this paper, DICOM medical image encryption on reconfigurable hardware is proposed. The encryption algorithm employed for DICOM images has used key dependent, repeated diffusion and substitution processes to make it more random and secure against cryptanalytic, statistical and brute-force attacks. The encryption architecture took 12,929 Logic elements (4%) and 344.91 mW of power on Cyclone II FPGA EP2C35F672C6. Besides, a technique to display the DICOM image on PC monitor using VGA interfacing has also been developed as a part of this work. The randomness of the encrypted medical image was analyzed through Correlation, Uniform distribution, Entropy, NPCR analyses and NIST Test Suite.