Challenges
Datasets
Workspaces
Papers
Discussions
Leaderboard
Log inSign up
Challenges
Datasets
Workspaces
Papers
Discussions
Leaderboard
Blog
Job Board
Q3AS

© 2026 Aqora Quantum S.A.S.

TermsPrivacyLegal Notice

IEEE Transactions on Consumer Electronics

QSMIT: A Quantum Secure Medical Image Transmission Using Sphincs+ With DICOM

Kumar Sekhar Roy, Shweta Singh, Manish Kumar, Rahul Kumar, Sk Mahmudul Hassan, Ruhul Amin Hazarika

Published Aug 20, 2025• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

As quantum computing capabilities continue to evolve, the need for quantum-secure communication protocols is becoming increasingly essential, and ongoing research in this area is crucial to maintain the security and privacy of digital information in healthcare and beyond. Considering the integrity of such data, we proposed a secure medical image transmission using a post-quantum digital signature scheme known as Sphincs+, as suggested by the National Institute of Standards and Technology. Sphincs+ offers strong security against quantum attacks, ensuring long-term data protection. It is stateless, avoids issues with key reuse, and provides efficient, scalable digital signatures. Its robustness and flexibility make it ideal for diverse applications, maintaining integrity even as quantum computing advances. We transmit a digitally signed image using DICOM encoding and Quantum Fourier Transform for transmission. DICOM ensures standardized, interoperable management of medical images, integrating devices and systems for accurate diagnosis for modern consumer healthcare workflows and record-keeping. The Quantum Fourier Transform offers exponential speedup and higher precision over the classical Fast Fourier Transform, particularly benefiting applications in signal processing, data encryption, and environmental sensing. Advanced mistake detection and repair techniques, as well as extraordinarily fast data transmission, are possible with quantum communication. Additionally, it preserves the confidentiality and integrity of data while lowering the possibility of data loss or corruption during transmission. Some popular performance measuring parameters, such as PNR, MSE, SSIM, etc., are used to validate the proposed framework and observe a convincing result.

DOI
10.1109/tce.2025.3601000

Related papers

Post‐Quantum Digital Signatures for Enhanced Medical Image Security

Kumar Sekhar Roy, Shweta Singh, Preethi Preethino Srivathsa +3 more

ABSTRACT Traditional encryption methods face significant challenges due to the rapid advancement of quantum computing, necessitating the use of quantum‐resistant solutions. Cryptographic hash functions are used by Sphincs+, a stateless hash‐based digital signature technique, to provide robust protection against quantum attacks. This research investigates the application of Sphincs+, alongside Dilithium and Falcon, to enhance the security of medical images, which are critical for diagnostic and therapeutic processes in healthcare. By utilising digital signatures for authentication and integrity verification, Sphincs+ mitigates risks associated with unauthorised tampering and data manipulation. The integration of Sphincs+ into medical imaging frameworks strengthens data security, ensuring long‐term resilience against quantum‐enabled threats while maintaining the reliability of healthcare records.

IET Quantum Communication•Jan 1, 2025•5 citations

Quantum-Safe Cryptography Implementation in Healthcare Cloud Systems: A Technical Framework

Nithya Ramachandran

As developments in quantum computing threaten to break existing encryption techniques safeguarding sensitive patient information in cloud-based medical systems, the healthcare sector is confronting never-before-seen cryptographic difficulties. Addressing unique needs like multi-decade data retention demands, legacy medical device limitations, and real-time patient care demands, the framework provides a specialized quantum-secure cryptographic design created particularly for healthcare settings. Three innovations are at the basis: a tiered implementation plan that dynamically allocates post-quantum protection level by medical data sensitivity categorisation, application to edge computing architecture that allows quantum-resistant security with resource-constrained medical devices without hardware enhancements, and healthcare interoperability-aware hybrid protocols to ensure continuous data transfer between FHIR, HL7, and DICOM standards in the event of cryptographic switchovers. The model uses NIST-standardized post-quantum algorithms such as CRYSTALS-Kyber and CRYSTALS-Dilithium (digital signatures) and SPHINCS+ (long-term integrity verification) tailored to healthcare with competing requirements of the highest security and lowest operations latency. The implementation strategies will include the application of phase-based implementation approaches that will include the infrastructure preparation phase through full integration of the ecosystem, with a special focus on the optimization of HIPAA compliance and alignment of regulatory frameworks. Performance optimization techniques leverage characteristic healthcare data access patterns, including patient-centric workflows, clinical department batch processing, and medical imaging parallelization strategies. The quantum-safe infrastructure establishes foundational capabilities for next-generation healthcare innovations, including precision medicine genomics platforms, federated artificial intelligence systems, and global health collaboration networks requiring cryptographic security guarantees spanning decades or centuries against both classical and quantum computational threats.

International Journal of Computational and Experimental Science and Engineering•Dec 16, 2025•0 citations

When classical encryption fails: A non-invasive post-quantum security layer for medical image transfers

Nino Ricchizzi, Pascal Alig, Niklas Schmitz +1 more

Quantum computing threatens the long-term security of widely deployed public-key cryptography used to protect medical image transfer. The Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM) standard is the dominant format and protocol suite for medical imaging workflows and is commonly transported over HTTPS. Conventional DICOM-over-HTTPS deployments rely on classical cryptographic primitives that are not resistant to quantum adversaries. This work evaluates the feasibility of integrating post-quantum cryptography (PQC) into existing DICOM transfer infrastructures without modifying DICOM applications or their cryptographic libraries. We present an empirical case study of xPIPE and RSNA MIRC-CTP as a widely deployed DICOM-over-HTTPS toolchain used in hospital environments. We propose a non-invasive proxy-based design that requires no modifications to the xPIPE client, the MIRC-CTP server, or their cryptographic libraries. The design encapsulates TLS-protected DICOM traffic within an additional PQC-secured tunnel, preserving the existing TLS channel while adding a quantum-resistant outer layer. We implement a proof of concept that preserves the existing Java TLS stack ( javax.net.ssl ) used by MIRC-CTP for the inner channel and adds a PQC-secured outer tunnel based on stunnel. We further compare alternative PQC integration strategies and discuss their security and operational trade-offs. Our results show that current PQC deployments impose an computational overhead and introduce integration constraints in heterogeneous environments. Nevertheless, the proposed approach enables incremental migration by maintaining compatibility with existing systems while providing an additional post-quantum security layer. • Non-invasive PQC Integration for Legacy Systems. • Quantum-Resistant Tunnel Layer Using OpenSSL and Stunnel. • Preservation of Regulatory Compliance. • PQC Migration Path Without System Disruption.

Informatics in Medicine Unlocked•Feb 21, 2026•0 citations

Unitary Operator Based Quantum Secure Access Structure for Medical Image Sharing

Digambar M. Padulkar, Jibi Abraham

Ensuring the secure storage and sharing of medical records in the cloud is increasingly crucial due to vulnerabilities in classical encryption methods, such as key manipulation and cloud collusion. This paper introduces a novel quantum-based approach using Quantum Fourier Transform (QFT) and Unitary operators. We designed three quantum circuits for different image sizes: one for the Unitary operator, one for encryption, and one for decryption. DICOM images are first transformed into quantum images with the NEQR algorithm, then encrypted using a Unitary operator, which serves as the encryption key. This key is securely transmitted via quantum teleportation, enhancing protection against classical and quantum attacks. Extensive simulations show the method's effectiveness and robustness in safeguarding medical data during cloud storage and transmission. This makes it a promising solution for secure medical image sharing in quantum communication networks.

IEEE Region 10 Conference (TENCON)•Dec 1, 2024•0 citations

Development of an Optimized QuantumTechniques for Secure Remote Medical Image Sharing

S. Princy Sophia Rani, Ahmad Abdelhafiz Ali Samhan, R. Srinivasa Rao +3 more

Secure remote sharing of medical images is essential for advancing telemedicine, accurate diagnostics, and collaborative healthcare delivery. The traditional cryptography techniques are fast turning to be susceptible to quantum computing risks and generally are less efficient in high throughput medical settings. To counter such a shortcoming, we present an innovative quantum-oriented solution that utilizes optimized methods of secure and real-time medical image transmission over a long-distance network. In this method, Quantum Key Distribution (BB84 protocol), hybrid cryptography, quantum informed optimization, and quantum steganography are used to provide efficient high-fidelity and low latency transmission of images. The QKD is used to securely create symmetric keys that are to be used in the AES 256 encryption of the image and Elliptic Curve Cryptography is applied so that the metadata can be kept confidential. Immutable and transparent access logs are kept by using the blockchain technology. In order to even improve the performance, a dynamically tuning encryption parameters using a Quantum Genetic Algorithm can be applied to eliminate the computing overhead. Experimental testing with NIH Chest X-ray dataset shows an average encryption and decryption speed of 38.1 milliseconds, with a success rate of more than 25% relative to the conventional post-quantum cryptographic system. The results of a secure transmission show a decrease in latency of 12.5% over the TLS-enhanced QKD. The system keeps the Quantum Bit Error Rate at less than 5% under realistic noise levels and retains more than 75% of the key material obtained. In quantum steganography, the level of accuracy to detect tampering is 98.6%, hence data integrity. The solution has shown the capability to integrate quantum-level security, computing performance, and regulatory durability to become a trusted and long-term process of safe sharing of medical images in modern healthcare systems.

International Conference on Recent Innovation in Science Engineering and Technology (ICRISET)•Aug 1, 2025•0 citations

A Multi-Modal Quantum Cryptographic Framework for Secure Text and Image Transmission

Karthik R, Maria Dominic M

Text and images data generation, transmission, and storage have seen an exponential growth with the advancement of digital platforms which poses serious security issues for the next generation communication systems.Traditional cryptographic methods (archive) have long-standing challenges from the point of view of scalability, key management overhead and complexity, computational demands but more importantly their sustainability against the future quantum computing threats.Quantum primitives that rely on mathematical hard problems are doomed to be broken by quantum adversaries with μ= Shor's and Grover's algorithms.Also, the integration of heterogeneous data types such as unstructured text and highdimensional images under a unified framework is still an open research problem.To solve these problems, this paper presents a multi-modal quantum cryptography system for secure message and image encryption/decryption and transmission.The framework is based on the basic concepts of quantum mechanics, such as superposition, entanglement and the nocloning theorem, concentrating mainly on Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) and cryptographic techniques resilient to quantum attacks.The proposed approach combines quantumsecure key establishment with modality-aware encoding and encryption, specifically designed for textual and image data transport, supporting confidentiality, integrity, and secure transit of the data while maintaining high level of fidelity to the original data after decryption.Comprehensive experimental results demonstrate the superiority of the proposed framework in all aspects over the existing work based PLS, PRS, and ACI schemes in terms of anti-self-interference ability, computational complexity or memory requirement, and resistance to cryptanalysis from both classical attacker (AA) and quantum adversary.Our findings indicate is that quantum-assisted encryption is resilient to the most aggressive threats and at the same time provides performance that is strong enough to be used on a large scale.By addressing some of the most pressing issues in the field, such as the threat of quantum attacks, the management of multi-modal data, and scalability, this research provides a foundation for a future-proof security framework that is applicable in the present as well.The new framework has a number of applications in the present, including secure medical imaging, digital forensics, and secure document transfer.

International Journal of Computer Networks And Applications•Apr 30, 2026•0 citations
As quantum computing capabilities continue to evolve, the need for quantum-secure communication protocols is becoming increasingly essential, and ongoing research in this area is crucial to maintain the security and privacy of digital information in healthcare and beyond. Considering the integrity of such data, we proposed a secure medical image transmission using a post-quantum digital signature scheme known as Sphincs+, as suggested by the National Institute of Standards and Technology. Sphincs+ offers strong security against quantum attacks, ensuring long-term data protection. It is stateless, avoids issues with key reuse, and provides efficient, scalable digital signatures. Its robustness and flexibility make it ideal for diverse applications, maintaining integrity even as quantum computing advances. We transmit a digitally signed image using DICOM encoding and Quantum Fourier Transform for transmission. DICOM ensures standardized, interoperable management of medical images, integrating devices and systems for accurate diagnosis for modern consumer healthcare workflows and record-keeping. The Quantum Fourier Transform offers exponential speedup and higher precision over the classical Fast Fourier Transform, particularly benefiting applications in signal processing, data encryption, and environmental sensing. Advanced mistake detection and repair techniques, as well as extraordinarily fast data transmission, are possible with quantum communication. Additionally, it preserves the confidentiality and integrity of data while lowering the possibility of data loss or corruption during transmission. Some popular performance measuring parameters, such as PNR, MSE, SSIM, etc., are used to validate the proposed framework and observe a convincing result.
ABSTRACT Traditional encryption methods face significant challenges due to the rapid advancement of quantum computing, necessitating the use of quantum‐resistant solutions. Cryptographic hash functions are used by Sphincs+, a stateless hash‐based digital signature technique, to provide robust protection against quantum attacks. This research investigates the application of Sphincs+, alongside Dilithium and Falcon, to enhance the security of medical images, which are critical for diagnostic and therapeutic processes in healthcare. By utilising digital signatures for authentication and integrity verification, Sphincs+ mitigates risks associated with unauthorised tampering and data manipulation. The integration of Sphincs+ into medical imaging frameworks strengthens data security, ensuring long‐term resilience against quantum‐enabled threats while maintaining the reliability of healthcare records.
As developments in quantum computing threaten to break existing encryption techniques safeguarding sensitive patient information in cloud-based medical systems, the healthcare sector is confronting never-before-seen cryptographic difficulties. Addressing unique needs like multi-decade data retention demands, legacy medical device limitations, and real-time patient care demands, the framework provides a specialized quantum-secure cryptographic design created particularly for healthcare settings. Three innovations are at the basis: a tiered implementation plan that dynamically allocates post-quantum protection level by medical data sensitivity categorisation, application to edge computing architecture that allows quantum-resistant security with resource-constrained medical devices without hardware enhancements, and healthcare interoperability-aware hybrid protocols to ensure continuous data transfer between FHIR, HL7, and DICOM standards in the event of cryptographic switchovers. The model uses NIST-standardized post-quantum algorithms such as CRYSTALS-Kyber and CRYSTALS-Dilithium (digital signatures) and SPHINCS+ (long-term integrity verification) tailored to healthcare with competing requirements of the highest security and lowest operations latency. The implementation strategies will include the application of phase-based implementation approaches that will include the infrastructure preparation phase through full integration of the ecosystem, with a special focus on the optimization of HIPAA compliance and alignment of regulatory frameworks. Performance optimization techniques leverage characteristic healthcare data access patterns, including patient-centric workflows, clinical department batch processing, and medical imaging parallelization strategies. The quantum-safe infrastructure establishes foundational capabilities for next-generation healthcare innovations, including precision medicine genomics platforms, federated artificial intelligence systems, and global health collaboration networks requiring cryptographic security guarantees spanning decades or centuries against both classical and quantum computational threats.
Quantum computing threatens the long-term security of widely deployed public-key cryptography used to protect medical image transfer. The Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM) standard is the dominant format and protocol suite for medical imaging workflows and is commonly transported over HTTPS. Conventional DICOM-over-HTTPS deployments rely on classical cryptographic primitives that are not resistant to quantum adversaries. This work evaluates the feasibility of integrating post-quantum cryptography (PQC) into existing DICOM transfer infrastructures without modifying DICOM applications or their cryptographic libraries. We present an empirical case study of xPIPE and RSNA MIRC-CTP as a widely deployed DICOM-over-HTTPS toolchain used in hospital environments. We propose a non-invasive proxy-based design that requires no modifications to the xPIPE client, the MIRC-CTP server, or their cryptographic libraries. The design encapsulates TLS-protected DICOM traffic within an additional PQC-secured tunnel, preserving the existing TLS channel while adding a quantum-resistant outer layer. We implement a proof of concept that preserves the existing Java TLS stack ( javax.net.ssl ) used by MIRC-CTP for the inner channel and adds a PQC-secured outer tunnel based on stunnel. We further compare alternative PQC integration strategies and discuss their security and operational trade-offs. Our results show that current PQC deployments impose an computational overhead and introduce integration constraints in heterogeneous environments. Nevertheless, the proposed approach enables incremental migration by maintaining compatibility with existing systems while providing an additional post-quantum security layer. • Non-invasive PQC Integration for Legacy Systems. • Quantum-Resistant Tunnel Layer Using OpenSSL and Stunnel. • Preservation of Regulatory Compliance. • PQC Migration Path Without System Disruption.
Ensuring the secure storage and sharing of medical records in the cloud is increasingly crucial due to vulnerabilities in classical encryption methods, such as key manipulation and cloud collusion. This paper introduces a novel quantum-based approach using Quantum Fourier Transform (QFT) and Unitary operators. We designed three quantum circuits for different image sizes: one for the Unitary operator, one for encryption, and one for decryption. DICOM images are first transformed into quantum images with the NEQR algorithm, then encrypted using a Unitary operator, which serves as the encryption key. This key is securely transmitted via quantum teleportation, enhancing protection against classical and quantum attacks. Extensive simulations show the method's effectiveness and robustness in safeguarding medical data during cloud storage and transmission. This makes it a promising solution for secure medical image sharing in quantum communication networks.
Secure remote sharing of medical images is essential for advancing telemedicine, accurate diagnostics, and collaborative healthcare delivery. The traditional cryptography techniques are fast turning to be susceptible to quantum computing risks and generally are less efficient in high throughput medical settings. To counter such a shortcoming, we present an innovative quantum-oriented solution that utilizes optimized methods of secure and real-time medical image transmission over a long-distance network. In this method, Quantum Key Distribution (BB84 protocol), hybrid cryptography, quantum informed optimization, and quantum steganography are used to provide efficient high-fidelity and low latency transmission of images. The QKD is used to securely create symmetric keys that are to be used in the AES 256 encryption of the image and Elliptic Curve Cryptography is applied so that the metadata can be kept confidential. Immutable and transparent access logs are kept by using the blockchain technology. In order to even improve the performance, a dynamically tuning encryption parameters using a Quantum Genetic Algorithm can be applied to eliminate the computing overhead. Experimental testing with NIH Chest X-ray dataset shows an average encryption and decryption speed of 38.1 milliseconds, with a success rate of more than 25% relative to the conventional post-quantum cryptographic system. The results of a secure transmission show a decrease in latency of 12.5% over the TLS-enhanced QKD. The system keeps the Quantum Bit Error Rate at less than 5% under realistic noise levels and retains more than 75% of the key material obtained. In quantum steganography, the level of accuracy to detect tampering is 98.6%, hence data integrity. The solution has shown the capability to integrate quantum-level security, computing performance, and regulatory durability to become a trusted and long-term process of safe sharing of medical images in modern healthcare systems.
Text and images data generation, transmission, and storage have seen an exponential growth with the advancement of digital platforms which poses serious security issues for the next generation communication systems.Traditional cryptographic methods (archive) have long-standing challenges from the point of view of scalability, key management overhead and complexity, computational demands but more importantly their sustainability against the future quantum computing threats.Quantum primitives that rely on mathematical hard problems are doomed to be broken by quantum adversaries with μ= Shor's and Grover's algorithms.Also, the integration of heterogeneous data types such as unstructured text and highdimensional images under a unified framework is still an open research problem.To solve these problems, this paper presents a multi-modal quantum cryptography system for secure message and image encryption/decryption and transmission.The framework is based on the basic concepts of quantum mechanics, such as superposition, entanglement and the nocloning theorem, concentrating mainly on Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) and cryptographic techniques resilient to quantum attacks.The proposed approach combines quantumsecure key establishment with modality-aware encoding and encryption, specifically designed for textual and image data transport, supporting confidentiality, integrity, and secure transit of the data while maintaining high level of fidelity to the original data after decryption.Comprehensive experimental results demonstrate the superiority of the proposed framework in all aspects over the existing work based PLS, PRS, and ACI schemes in terms of anti-self-interference ability, computational complexity or memory requirement, and resistance to cryptanalysis from both classical attacker (AA) and quantum adversary.Our findings indicate is that quantum-assisted encryption is resilient to the most aggressive threats and at the same time provides performance that is strong enough to be used on a large scale.By addressing some of the most pressing issues in the field, such as the threat of quantum attacks, the management of multi-modal data, and scalability, this research provides a foundation for a future-proof security framework that is applicable in the present as well.The new framework has a number of applications in the present, including secure medical imaging, digital forensics, and secure document transfer.