Smart healthcare system using integrated and lightweight ECC with private blockchain for multimedia medical data processing

Cloud-based Healthcare 4.0 systems have research challenges with secure medical data processing, especially biomedical image processing with privacy protection. Medical records are generally text/numerical or multimedia. Multimedia data includes X-ray scans, Computed Tomography (CT) scans, Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) scans, etc. Transferring biomedical multimedia data to medical authorities raises various security concerns. This paper proposes a one-of-a-kind blockchain-based secure biomedical image processing system that maintains anonymity. The integrated Healthcare 4.0 assisted multimedia image processing architecture includes an edge layer, fog computing layer, cloud storage layer, and blockchain layer. The edge layer collects and sends periodic medical information from the patient to the higher layer. The multimedia data from the edge layer is securely preserved in blockchain-assisted cloud storage through fog nodes using lightweight cryptography. Medical users then safely search such data for medical treatment or monitoring. Lightweight cryptographic procedures are proposed by employing Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) with Elliptic Curve Diffie-Hellman (ECDH) and Elliptic Curve Digital Signature (ECDS) algorithm to secure biomedical image processing while maintaining privacy (ECDSA). The proposed technique is experimented with using publically available chest X-ray and CT images. The experimental results revealed that the proposed model shows higher computational efficiency (encryption and decryption time), Peak to Signal Noise Ratio (PSNR), and Meas Square Error (MSE).