Image encryption utilizing lossy image compression

Abstract

As the network technologies are improving, more challenges are coming forward in form of huge amount of data being transferred through the network. A large portion of such data is of multimedia type consisting of huge amount of digital images being sent and received through the network. In this paper, an integrated image compression and encryption technique using run length encoding scheme and henon chaotic map is presented. Run length encoding scheme is common scheme and a natural choice for image compression. Run length encoding generates (value, count) pairs such that the value is repeated ‘count’ number of times. In this paper, we used the run length encoding technique for lossy image compression. We designed a lossy run length encoder that exploits the pixel redundancy and visual imperceptibility of human eye to fine details in the digital images. Along with compression we perform image encryption using henon chaotic map. After encryption the size and resolution of the image is changed that further enhances the security. Various experiments are performed calculating various performance matrices-histogram, information entropy, PSNR, Compression ratio, and MSE. The algorithm is secure enough to thwart various statistical attacks while being easy to implement and fast.