An improved and extended version of a quaternion-based lossless encryption technique for digital image and communication on medicine (DICOM) images is proposed. We highlight and address several security flaws present in the previous version of the algorithm originally proposed by Dzwonkowski et al. (2015). The newly proposed secure quaternion Feistel cipher (S-QFC) algorithm retains the concept of a modified Feistel network with modular arithmetic and the use of special properties of quaternions to perform rotations of data sequences in 3D space for each of the cipher rounds. A new and more secure key generation scheme based on quaternion Julia sets is utilized. We also introduce both-sided modular matrix multiplications for the encryption and decryption processes. The proposed S-QFC algorithm eliminates the major security flaws of its predecessor while maintaining high computation speed in comparison to other algorithms originally embedded in DICOM (i.e., advanced encryption standard and triple data encryption standard). A computer-based analysis has been carried out. Simulation results and cryptanalysis are shown at the end of this paper.

In this paper, a new quaternion-based lossless encryption technique for digital image and communication on medicine (DICOM) images is proposed. We have scrutinized and slightly modified the concept of the DICOM network to point out the best location for the proposed encryption scheme, which significantly improves speed of DICOM images encryption in comparison with those originally embedded into DICOM advanced encryption standard and triple data encryption standard algorithms. The proposed algorithm decomposes a DICOM image into two 8-bit gray-tone images in order to perform encryption. The algorithm implements Feistel network like the scheme proposed by Sastry and Kumar. It uses special properties of quaternions to perform rotations of data sequences in 3D space for each of the cipher rounds. The images are written as Lipschitz quaternions, and modular arithmetic was implemented for operations with the quaternions. A computer-based analysis has been carried out, and the obtained results are shown at the end of this paper.

For original paper see ibid., vol. 4, no. 1, p. 121-8 (2002). It is shown that the watermarking algorithm presented in the above paper (R. Liu et al., 2002) can be easily discredited and ipso facto cannot be used for protecting rightful ownership