Secure Processing and Delivery of Medical Images for Patient Information Protection

In the delivery of medical imaging (such as X-ray, MRI) for remote diagnosis, the protection of the security and privacy of patient’s information is extremely important. As conventional E-mail delivery is considered insecure, nowadays, people send medical images to a remote location using secure shared network storage space over IP protocol. While this is more reliable than traditional E-mail delivery, it introduces higher costs and dedicated devices. In this study, we propose a reliable and economical E-mail delivery approach which ensures the security and privacy of imaging contents and patient information. In the proposed methodology, patient information within the medical images (host image) is encrypted and embedded. Consequently, confidential data will not be visually available to unauthorized personnel. In order to further ensure the secure delivery of the medical images via E-mail over public network such as the Internet, the proposed system utilizes non-web-based Secure E-mail transmission using the Enigmail security extension installed on E-mail client software Mozilla Thunderbird. Thunderbird, Enigmail security extension, and Enigmail’s essential component GNU Privacy Guard (GnuPG), are all open source and freely available online. With this system, any medical image that requires electronic transmission will have the patient's information protected, and will be readily available immediately upon the delivery at the destination. This system is an economical and reliable alternative to the IP-based delivery.