An Adaptive Steganographic Method for Reversible Information Embedding in X-Ray Images
Daiyrbayeva E. Yerimbetova A. Merzlyakova E. Sadyk U. Sarina A. Taichik Z. Ismailova I. Iztleuov Y. Nurmangaliyev A.
September 2025Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute (MDPI)
Computers
2025#14Issue 9
The rapid digitalisation of the medical field has heightened concerns over protecting patients’ personal information during the transmission of medical images. This study introduces a method for securely transmitting X-ray images that contain embedded patient data. The proposed steganographic approach ensures that the original image remains intact while the embedded data is securely hidden, a critical requirement in medical contexts. To guarantee reversibility, the Interpolation Near Pixels method was utilised, recognised as one of the most effective techniques within reversible data hiding (RDH) frameworks. Additionally, the method integrates a statistical property preservation technique, enhancing the scheme’s alignment with ideal steganographic characteristics. Specifically, the “forest fire” algorithm partitions the image into interconnected regions, where statistical analyses of low-order bits are performed, followed by arithmetic decoding to achieve a desired distribution. This process successfully maintains the original statistical features of the image. The effectiveness of the proposed method was validated through stegoanalysis on real-world medical images from previous studies. The results revealed high robustness, with minimal distortion of stegocontainers, as evidenced by high PSNR values ranging between 52 and 81 dB.
data protection , data transmission , digital images , interpolation , steganography , stegonalysis
Text of the article Перейти на текст статьи
Institute of Information and Computational Technologies of the Committee of Science of the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Republic of Kazakhstan, Almaty, 050010, Kazakhstan
Department of Software Engineering, Satbayev University, Almaty, 050013, Kazakhstan
Faculty of Information Science and Computer Engineering, Siberian State University of Telecommunications and Information Science, Novosibirsk, 630102, Russian Federation
Department of Computer Science, School of Information Technology and Applied Mathematics, SDU University, Kaskelen, 040900, Kazakhstan
Department of Medicine, Marat Ospanov West Kazakhstan Medical University, Aktobe, 030000, Kazakhstan
Higher School of Natural Sciences, Margulan University, Pavlodar, 140000, Kazakhstan
Department of Information Technologies, “Q” University, Almaty, 050026, Kazakhstan
Institute of Information and Computational Technologies of the Committee of Science of the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Republic of Kazakhstan
Department of Software Engineering
Faculty of Information Science and Computer Engineering
Department of Computer Science
Department of Medicine
Higher School of Natural Sciences
Department of Information Technologies
10 лет помогаем публиковать статьи Международный издатель
Книга Публикация научной статьи Волощук 2026 Book Publication of a scientific article 2026