QR code based color image cryptography for the secured transmission of ECG signal

The paper presents a novel QR code based color image steganography to facilitate remote transmission of ECG signal along with patient diagnosis data. The proposed system is configured with two stage security processes, namely pixel permutation and chaos encryption. A three step sequential strategy is adapted for the implementation of the system. At first, the diagnose information in the form of alphanumeric data is given to QR code generator for the generation of equivalent 2D binary matrix. Similarly, the ECG signal samples are transformed into alphanumeric cipher text by involving integer to binary sequence conversion process and eventually into corresponding QR codes. Secondly, the both diagnose data as well as ECG signal integrated QR codes are embedded within individual R, G and B color image components by using the pixel permutation process. Finally, the color image components, R, B and G are individually encrypted by using 1D chaotic encryption technique as an attempt to enhance further the security of existing steganography process. The experimental results are validated in terms of NCPR, UACI and also entropy which found to be better and comparable than other baseline algorithms.