Optical Image Split-encryption Based on Object Plane for Completely Removing the Silhouette Problem

Abstract

We propose a split-encryption scheme on converting original images to multiple ciphertexts. This conversion introduces one random phase-only function (POF) to influence phase distribution of the preliminary ciphertexts. In the encryption process, the original image is mathematically split into two POFs. Then, they are modulated on a spatial light modulator one after another. And subsequently two final ciphertexts are generated by utilizing two-step phase-shifting interferometry. In the decryption process, a high-quality reconstructed image with relative error <TEX>$RE=7.6061{\times}10^{-31}$</TEX> can be achieved only when the summation of the two ciphertexts is Fresnel-transformed to the reconstructed plane. During the verification process, any silhouette information was invisible in the two reconstructed images from different single ciphertexts. Both of the two single REs are more than 0.6, which is better than in previous research. Moreover, this proposed scheme works well with gray images.