Advanced research on secure transmission of medical images
SRM University-AP promotes translational research that can add value to society making lives better. Following the tradition, Dr Priyanka Singh, Assistant Professor and her PhD student Ms Jyothsna Devi from the Department of Computer Science and Engineering have published their recent research work “Region-based Hybrid Medical Image Watermarking Scheme for Robust and Secured Transmission in IoMT” in ‘IEEE Access journal’ (Impact Factor of 3.36).
Dr Priyanka’s research focuses on the healthcare industry that is rapidly transforming medical images into ones that operate in real-time environments (IoMT, IoT, Cloud and so on). The research is proposed to address security and integrity issues in medical image transmission on IoT and edge healthcare applications with a lossless reversible region-based MIW scheme.
In this era of technological advancement, medical images and patient information are widely transmitted through a public transmission channel on the Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) applications. While sharing medical images or electronic patient records (EPR) through a public network, they can get tampered with or manipulated, leading to the wrong diagnosis by the medical consultants. Confidentiality of the patient record is also a major concern. Thus, it is very important to ensure the authenticity, authorisation, integrity, and confidentiality of the information during transmission.
ABSTRACT:
With the growth in Internet and digital technology, the Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) and Telemedicine have become buzzwords in healthcare. A large number of medical images and information are shared through a public network in these applications. This paper proposes a region-based hybrid Medical Image Watermarking (MIW) scheme to ensure the authenticity, authorisation, integrity, and confidentiality of the medical images transmitted through a public network in IoMT. In the proposed scheme, the medical image is segmented into Region of Interest (RoI) and Region of Non-Interest (RoNI).
RoI tamper detection and recovery bits are embedded in RoI to ensure the integrity of the medical image. RoI is watermarked using adaptive Least Significant Bit (LSB) substitution with respect to the hiding capacity map for higher RoI imperceptibility and accuracy in tamper detection and recovery. Electronic Patient Record (EPR) is compressed using Huffman coding and encrypted using a pseudo-random key (secret key) to provide higher confidentiality and payload. Encrypted EPR, QR code of hospital logo and RoI recovery bits are embedded in RoNI using Discrete Wavelet Transform-Singular Value Decomposition (DWT-SVD) hybrid transforms to achieve a robust watermark.
The proposed scheme is tested under various geometric and non-geometric attacks such as filtering, compression, rotation, salt and pepper noise and shearing. The evaluation results demonstrate that the proposed scheme has high imperceptibility, robustness, security, payload, tamper detection, and recovery accuracy under image processing attacks. Therefore, the proposed scheme can be used in the transmission of medical images and EPR in IoMT. The relevance of the proposed scheme is established by its superior performance in comparison to some of the popular existing schemes.
- Published in Computer Science News, CSE NEWS, News, Research News
Dr Aqsa Agha receives the South Asia Public Health Fellowship
Dr Aqsa Agha, Assistant Professor, the Department of History, has been awarded the South Asia Public Health Fellowship Project by The Institute of Public Health (India) in collaboration with the International Union against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease. As the South Asia Public Health Fellow-India, Dr Agha is expected to conduct research on the ethics of the tobacco industry and submit the report over a period of 8 months, i.e. from December 01, 2021, to July 31, 2022. She has been granted an amount of USD 6660 to carry out the project.
Along with producing a quality case study on India focusing on industry interferences promoting the tobacco epidemic and undermining public policies related to tobacco control, the project entails drafting the regional report on South Asia. It will bring together country-level case studies and implications between December-May, 2022, engaging in the dissemination of the country-level case studies with relevant stakeholders in June-July 2022.
Article 5.3 of the World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (WHO FCTC) acts as a treaty for ratified countries to protect their citizens against the commercial and vested interests of the tobacco industry as per guidelines laid down in the said article. Countries of South Asia, including India, have signed and fully ratified this treaty in the early 2000s. However, the lack of robust national policies and continued influence of the tobacco industry perpetuates the tobacco epidemic, as established in the available literature. Given each country’s mandate to protect the health of its citizens, there is a growing need to understand issues of tobacco industry interferences that undermine public policies meant to protect its population. The South Asian Public Health Fellowship is an initiative to generate knowledge regarding issues of tobacco industry interference not only in India but in other countries of South Asia (i.e., Nepal, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh) to better understand such issues from a regional perspective.
Dr Aqsa Agha holds a PhD in History from the Centre for Historical Studies, JNU. She is also the Project Head of Unnat Bharat Abhiyan at SRM University-AP. Before joining SRM University-AP, Dr Agha was a Consultant with Partners in Change, New Delhi and prepared a report titled “Status of Corporate Responsibility in India, 2020”, focusing on corporate responsibility and ethical business practices. Prior to that, she worked as a Research Officer for National Research Study on Human Trafficking in India at TISS, Mumbai. Before TISS, she worked with the Human Rights Defenders’ Alert- India on human rights violations on the India-Bangladesh border in West Bengal. Along with teaching, she has consulted with organisations, including the Centre for Equity Studies, New Delhi, where she conducted sessions with grassroots activists to effectively observe, analyse and document reality through participatory research. Her broader research interest lies in historical processes and their impact on the social locations of class, caste and gender.
- Published in Faculty Achievements, History Current Happenings, History News, News, Research News
Dr Azizuddin Khan deliberated upon Medication Adherence
Department of Psychology, SRM University, AP-Andhra Pradesh organised a guest lecture on the topic “Prospective Memory and Aging in Medication Adherence: An Experimental Investigation” on January 27, 2022, from 3:30 to 4:30 pm. Dr Azizuddin Khan, Professor, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology-Mumbai, attended the session as the eminent speaker.
The session started with a brief introduction of Prof Khan by Mrs Ayesha Parveen Haroon, Lecturer, Department of Psychology. Thereafter, Prof Khan delivered his lecture wherein he deliberated upon the medical adherence, aging and prospective memory as well as the factors affecting medical adherence. Specifically, he emphasised the effect of memory and intellectual abilities on medical adherence. Following Prof Khan’s presentation, the questions raised by the audience were communicated to Prof Khan by Dr Aehsan Ahmad Dar, Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology. Prof Khan provided interesting insights on the questions raised. The programme ended with the vote of thanks delivered by Dr Ninad Patwardhan, Assistant Professor and Faculty Coordinator, Department of Psychology.
- Published in News, Psychology News
Budget Panel Discussion 2022-23
The Department of Economics of SRM University-AP, Andhra Pradesh, conducted a Panel Discussion on February 09, 2022, for the much needed and relevant in-depth analysis of the Union Budget proposed by the Finance Minister in the parliament on February 01, 2022.
Professor Bandi Kamaiah was the moderator of the event, and Dr Anandarao Suvvari, the faculty coordinator of the Department of Economics in the University, organised this discussion, inviting four eminent public finance economists of India, Prof N R Bhanu Murthy, Vice-Chancellor, BASE University, Bengaluru; Prof K R Shanmugam, Director, Madras School of Economics, Chennai; Prof K Gayathri, Professor, Institute for Social and Economic Change (ISEC), Bengaluru; Dr Shri Hari Naidu, Economist, National Institute of Public Finance and Policy (NIPFP), New Delhi. The co-convenors of the event were Dr Ghanshyam Pandey, Dr Manzoor Hassan Malik, Dr Kamal Sai Erra, Dr Hari Venkatesh from the Department of Economics SRM-AP.
The discussion started with a brief overview and essence of the Union budget by Dr Anandarao Suvvari, followed by Prof Bandi Kamaiah. Then first panellist Prof N R Bhanu Murthy, who our Indian Finance Minister also quoted, spoke about how the current budget is a continuation of the previous budget and emphasised more on the capital expenditure, which is the route to growth. He highlighted that the government should bring efficiency in public expenditure and expressed that the public policymakers side-lined the public debt number to GDP ratio at both central and state levels. An issue identified by Prof Murthy was bringing in many commodities under the customs tariff line and how doing this will have a negative impact on the exports. Further, he mentioned the ignorance towards the health and education sectors by a reduction in the allocation of expenditure for the same.
The second panellist Prof K R Shanmugam, gave a very detailed look at the budget, sector by sector, pointing out the benefits and the concerns related to each of them. He gave us a brief look at how the Indian economy has been doing for the past few years and gave an analysis taking this into consideration and stated that the budget had provided necessary fiscal stimuli through an increase in capital expenditure for the revival of the economy.
The third panellist Prof K Gayathri highlighted the philosophy of policy implications of budget and the need for a continuous process for analysing it. She also focused on the need for scientificity for estimates and the need for a sustainable approach for the budget. She pointed out that the current budget was future-looking in line with the vision for India 100 and that it put thorough emphasis on capacity building inclusive development by involving all stakeholders and modern infrastructure while expressing concern over effective implementation of policies.
The final panellist, Dr Shri Hari Naidu, discussed the revenue side of the budget thoroughly while focusing on the new taxation regime, other and legitimising crypto assets and digital Indian currency. In addition to this, Dr Naidu commented on the budget that the tax GDP ratio has been stagnant for the past two decades also, it has not been addressed in the budget, and despite the fact that there were a lot of tax reforms, the tax bases needed to be expanded.
After individual reviews by the panellists, questions posed by the students and the co-convenors were answered, followed by an interactive and engaging discussion among panellists, moderator, convenor and co-convenors on various issues spanning from the way of analysing the budget, trade-offs between debt and capital expenditure, debt sustainability, control mechanisms, the process of allocation, outcome evaluation or impact of the budget and the need for reality and effectiveness of planned budget on the ground level.
The session, after a thorough discussion on the union budget, was concluded by a vote of thanks proposed by Asst. Prof. Dr Hari Venkatesh to the esteemed panellists, moderator, convenor, co-convenors and all the people who made this session successful for contributing their precious time and valued efforts.
- Published in Departmental News, Economics Current Happenings, Economics News, News