A Symmetric Key Reversible Data Hiding Framework for Online Healthcare Systems using LSB Steganography and SHA-256

Abstract

This research presents a reversible encryption framework for the security of medical images while maintaining the integrity, quality and confidentiality in electronic patient records (EPR) transmission. It achieves integrity and quality preservation, lossless recovery, and robust security through hybrid architecture of cryptographic and steganographic techniques. Using reversible XOR based encryption and Least Significant Bit (LSB) steganography it makes sure to perfect reconstruct the medical image and Electronic Patient Record (EPR) without any loss, different from the traditional encryption methods that has potential to introduce distortions in compression. SHA-256 hashing can ensure integrity verification, detects any modification in transmission. The architecture ensures MSE = 0, PSNR = ∞, SSIM = 1, which means 100% of lossless recovery and perfect visual coherence. The dual layer encryption process—encrypting the medical image with a dynamic key stream followed by encrypting with using the EPR—provides security, imperceptibility and steganalysis resistance. Experimental results confirm that the architecture is suitable for medical imaging applications where precise diagnostic and data confidentiality in data is critical.