Securing DNA Profiles Using AES Cryptography: New Approach to Encrypted Biometric Authentication in EHR Systems

Electronic Health Records EHRs have revolutionized healthcare by storing patient data in a digital format, increasing accessibility and efficiency. However, the flaws of traditional authentication methods necessitate the development of advanced security solutions. This study presents a novel methodology integrating AES-256 encryption with DNA-based steganography to enhance biometric verification in Electronic Health Records EHRs. The approach involves extracting Short Tandem Repeats STRs and Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms SNPs from DNA profiles, encoding the genetic data into binary format, and securing it with AES-256 encryption to ensure high confidentiality. Encrypted DNA profiles are embedded in MRI images by using the Discrete Cosine Transform DCT, which ensures the concealed data remains both imperceptible and secure against unauthorized alterations, and during the authentication phase, and the encrypted genetic information is extracted, decrypted, and matched with reference samples for verification, the experimental results indicate that the system significantly improves both biometric security and medical data protection, with average processing time of approximately 320 milliseconds, and as it exhibits strong resistance to tampering, achieving has a 99.8% success rate in preventing unauthorized modifications. The embedding method maintains a high level of image quality, reflected by a Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratio PSNR of around 47 dB, confirming that the diagnostic utility of MRI images remains unaffected. This approach effectively combines biometric security with medical data safeguarding, providing a dependable and scalable solution for patient authentication in electronic health record EHR systems.