Histogram based QR Code Authentication using Medical Images

Author(s):  
Sujatha C. N

Medical images require proper attention during the information embedding since the information which is to be embedded should not disturb the image quality. The remedy for the distortion caused by embedding data into medical images can be overcome by using lossless data hiding techniques. QR Code are consisting of relevant medical information that can be retrieved easily. In the present, information security become vital asset at the communication services, thereby concealing of information become a dilemma. For this issue, we employ a method known as Steganography in which the data is concealed in a medium like text, image etc., and appears to be normal, without affecting the quality of the hidden medium. Watermarking enables the protection of data format which is embedded with other data format and provides ownership access to the end user in unrecognizable format. Both steganography and watermarking techniques employ greater security to the information which can be embedded within a data format of any type.

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yaobin Yin ◽  
Jianguang Ji ◽  
Peng Lu ◽  
Wenyao Zhong ◽  
Liying Sun ◽  
...  

BACKGROUND With online health information becoming increasingly popular among patients and their family members, concerns have been raised about the accuracy from the websites. OBJECTIVE We aimed to evaluate the overall quality of the online information about scaphoid fracture obtained from Chinese websites using the local search engines. METHODS We conducted an online search using the keyword “scaphoid fracture” from the top 5 search engines in China, i.e. Baidu, Shenma, Haosou, Sougou and Bing, and gathered the top ranked websites, which included a total of 120 websites. Among them, 81 websites were kept for further analyses by removing duplicated and unrelated one as well as websites requiring payment. These websites were classified into four categories, including forum/social networks, commercials, academics and physician’s personals. Health information evaluation tool DISCERN and Scaphoid Fracture Specific Content Score (SFSCS) were used to assess the quality of the websites. RESULTS Among the 81 Chinese websites that we studied, commercial websites were the most common one accounting more than half of all websites. The mean DISCERN score of the 81 websites was 25.56 and no website had a score A (ranging from 64 to 80).The mean SFSCS score was 10.04 and no website had a score A (range between 24 and 30). In addition, DISCERN and SFSCS scores from academic and physician’s websites were significantly higher than those from the forum/social networks and commercials. CONCLUSIONS The overall quality of health information obtained from Chinese websites about scaphoid fracture was very low, suggesting that patients and their family members should be aware such deficiency and pay special attentions for the medical information obtained by using the current search engines in China.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ke Zeng ◽  
Weiguo Zhu ◽  
Caiyou Wang ◽  
Liyan Zhu

BACKGROUND The rapid spread of COVID-19 has created a severe challenge to China’s healthcare system. Hospitals across the country reacted quickly under the leadership of the Chinese government and implemented a range of informatization measures to effectively respond to the COVID-19. OBJECTIVE To understand the impact of the pandemic on the medical business of Chinese hospitals and the difficulties faced by hospital informatization construction. To discuss the application of hospital informatization measures during the COVID-19 pandemic. To summarize the practical experience of hospitals using information technology to fight the pandemic. METHODS Performing a cross-sectional on-line questionnaire survey in Chinese hospitals, of which the participants are invited including hospital information staff, hospital administrators, medical staff, etc. Statistical analyzing the collected data by using SPSS version 24. RESULTS A total of 804 valid questionnaires (88.45%) are collected in this study from 30 provinces in mainland China, of which 731 (90.92%) were filled out by hospital information staff. 473 (58.83%) hospitals are tertiary hospitals while the remaining 331 (41.17%) are secondary hospitals. The majority hospitals (82.46%) had a drop in their business volume during the pandemic and a more substantial drop is found in tertiary hospitals. 70.40% (n=566) of hospitals have upgraded or modified their information systems in response to the epidemic. The proportion of tertiary hospitals that upgraded or modified systems is significantly higher than that of secondary hospitals. Internet hospital consultation (70.52%), pre-check and triage (62.56%), telemedicine (60.32%), health QR code (57.71%), and telecommuting (50.87%) are the most used informatization anti-pandemic measures. There are obvious differences in the application of information measures between tertiary hospitals and secondary hospitals. Among these measures, most of them (41.17%) are aiming at serving patients and most of them (62.38%) are universal which continue to be used after pandemic. The informatization measures are mostly used to control the source of infection (48.19%), such as health QR Code, etc. During the pandemic, the main difficulties faced by the hospital information department are “information construction projects are hindered” (58.96%) and “increased difficulty in ensuring network information security” (58.58%). There are significant differences in this issue between tertiary hospitals and secondary hospitals. The shortcomings of hospital informatization that should be made up for are “shorten patient consultation time and optimize consultation process” (72.51%), “Ensure network information security” (72.14%) and “build internet hospital consultations platform” (59.95%). CONCLUSIONS A significant number of innovative medical information technology have been used and played a significant role in all phases of COVID-19 prevention and control in China. Since the COVID-19 brought many challenges and difficulties for informatization work, hospitals need to constantly improve their own information technology skills to respond to public health emergencies that arise at any moment.


Author(s):  
Adnan Alam Khan ◽  
Dr. Asadullah Shah ◽  
Saghir Muhammad

Telemedicine is one of the most emerging technologies of applied medical sciences. Medical information related to patients is transmitted and stored for references and consultations. Medical images occupy huge space; in order to transmit these images may delay the process of image transmission in critical times. Image compression techniques provide a better solution to combat bandwidth scarcity problems, and transmit same image in a much lower bandwidth requirements, more faster and at the same time maintain quality. In this paper a differential image compression method is developed in which medical images are taken from a wounded patient and are compressed to reduce the bit rate of these images. Results indicate that on average 25% compression on images is achieved with 3.5 MOS taken from medical doctors and other paramedical staff the ultimately user of the images.


2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (2_suppl) ◽  
pp. 2325967121S0001
Author(s):  
François Sigonney ◽  
Camille Steltzlen ◽  
Pierre Alban Bouché ◽  
Nicolas Pujol

Objectives: The Internet, especially YouTube, is an important and growing source of medical information. The content of this information is poorly evaluated. The objective of this study was to analyze the quality of YouTube video content on meniscus repair. The hypothesis was that this source of information is not relevant for patients. Methods: A YouTube search was carried out using the keywords "meniscus repair". Videos had to have had more than 10,000 views to be included. The videos were analyzed by two evaluators. Various features of the videos were recorded (number of views, date of publication, "likes", "don’t likes", number of comments, source, type of content and the origin of the video). The quality of the video content was analyzed by two validated information system scores: the JAMA benchmark score (0 to 4) and the Modified DISCERN score (0 to 5). A specific meniscus repair score (MRSS scored out of 22) was developed for this study, in the same way that a specific score has been developed for other similar studies (anterior cruciate ligament, spine, etc.). Results: Forty-four (44) videos were included in the study. The average number of views per video was 180,100 (± 222,000) for a total number of views of 7,924,095. The majority of the videos were from North America (90.9%). In most cases, the source (uploader) that published the video was a doctor (59.1%). A manufacturer, an institution and a non-medical source were the other sources. The content actually contained information on meniscus repair in only 50% of the cases. The mean scores for the JAMA benchmark, MD score and MRSS were 1.6/4± 0.75, 1.2/5 ± 1.02 and 4.5/22 (± 4.01) respectively. No correlation was found between the number of views and the quality of the videos. The quality of videos from medical sources was not superior to those from other sources. Conclusion: The content of YouTube videos on meniscus repair is of very low quality. Physicians should inform patients and, more importantly, contribute to the improvement of these contents.


Author(s):  
Mingliang Xu ◽  
Qingfeng Li ◽  
Jianwei Niu ◽  
Hao Su ◽  
Xiting Liu ◽  
...  

Quick response (QR) codes are usually scanned in different environments, so they must be robust to variations in illumination, scale, coverage, and camera angles. Aesthetic QR codes improve the visual quality, but subtle changes in their appearance may cause scanning failure. In this article, a new method to generate scanning-robust aesthetic QR codes is proposed, which is based on a module-based scanning probability estimation model that can effectively balance the tradeoff between visual quality and scanning robustness. Our method locally adjusts the luminance of each module by estimating the probability of successful sampling. The approach adopts the hierarchical, coarse-to-fine strategy to enhance the visual quality of aesthetic QR codes, which sequentially generate the following three codes: a binary aesthetic QR code, a grayscale aesthetic QR code, and the final color aesthetic QR code. Our approach also can be used to create QR codes with different visual styles by adjusting some initialization parameters. User surveys and decoding experiments were adopted for evaluating our method compared with state-of-the-art algorithms, which indicates that the proposed approach has excellent performance in terms of both visual quality and scanning robustness.


Energies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 673
Author(s):  
Augustyn Wójcik ◽  
Piotr Bilski ◽  
Robert Łukaszewski ◽  
Krzysztof Dowalla ◽  
Ryszard Kowalik

The paper presents the novel HF-GEN method for determining the characteristics of Electrical Appliance (EA) operating in the end-user environment. The method includes a measurement system that uses a pulse signal generator to improve the quality of EA identification. Its structure and the principles of operation are presented. A method for determining the characteristics of the current signals’ transients using the cross-correlation is described. Its result is the appliance signature with a set of features characterizing its state of operation. The quality of the obtained signature is evaluated in the standard classification task with the aim of identifying the particular appliance’s state based on the analysis of features by three independent algorithms. Experimental results for 15 EAs categories show the usefulness of the proposed approach.


Author(s):  
Anna Lewandowska ◽  
Grzegorz Rudzki ◽  
Tomasz Lewandowski ◽  
Sławomir Rudzki

(1) Background: As the literature analysis shows, cancer patients experience a variety of different needs. Each patient reacts differently to the hardships of the illness. Assessment of needs allows providing more effective support, relevant to every person’s individual experience, and is necessary for setting priorities for resource allocation, for planning and conducting holistic care, i.e., care designed to improve a patient’s quality of life in a significant way. (2) Patients and Methods: A population survey was conducted between 2018 and 2020. Cancer patients, as well as their caregivers, received an invitation to take part in the research, so their problems and needs could be assessed. (3) Results: The study involved 800 patients, 78% women and 22% men. 66% of the subjects were village residents, while 34%—city residents. The mean age of patients was 62 years, SD = 11.8. The patients received proper treatment within the public healthcare. The surveyed group of caregivers was 88% women and 12% men, 36% village residents and 64% city residents. Subjects were averagely 57 years old, SD 7.8. At the time of diagnosis, the subjects most often felt anxiety, despair, depression, feelings of helplessness (46%, 95% CI: 40–48). During illness and treatment, the subjects most often felt fatigued (79%, 95% CI: 70–80). Analysis of needs showed that 93% (95% CI: 89–97) of patients experienced a certain level of need for help in one or more aspects. (4) Conclusions: Patients diagnosed with cancer have a high level of unmet needs, especially in terms of psychological support and medical information. Their caregivers also experience needs and concerns regarding the disease. Caregivers should be made aware of the health consequences of cancer and consider appropriate supportive care for their loved ones.


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