  The increased growth in the use of transmission of multimedia medical
contents over unsecured and open networks provides insecurity for confidential
patient information over these networks. Digital encryption of medical images
before transmission and storage is proposed as a way to effectively provide
protection of patient information. Encryption before watermarking of these
images is necessary in order to ensure inaccessibility of information to
unauthorized personnel with patient. This paper presented a visual
cryptographic technique for encrypting of medical images before transmission or
storage of them. This will make such images inaccessible by unauthorized
personnel and also ensures confidentiality. The process made use of an
encryption technique that is based on pixel shuffling and a secret key
generated from the image.
