Privacy-Preserving Color Image Feature Extraction by Quaternion Discrete Orthogonal Moments

Abstract

To implement image storage and computation in cloud servers without violating users’ privacy, privacy-preserving feature extraction has been a new research interest. The existing works are mainly designed for grayscale images. For color images, they tend to convert them to grayscale images or obtain the results of the combination of single-channel processes. While the capabilities of features extracted from the encrypted color images will be affected if color information and inter-relationship between color channels are ignored. To fully preserve features of color images, we introduce quaternion theory to encode each color image and propose an improved vector homomorphic encryption scheme (IVHE) to encrypt quaternion-based color images. IVHE helps protect image content and keep vector characteristics of color images. Based on IVHE, the framework for feature extraction of privacy-preserving Quaternion Discrete Orthogonal Moments (PPQDOMs) is presented. Theoretical analyses prove that Quaternion Discrete Orthogonal Moments (QDOMs) can be extracted from the encrypted color images by PPQDOMs. Furthermore, we apply three common Discrete Orthogonal Moments to the proposed framework to evaluate its performance. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed framework can protect color image content and perform well compared to QDOMs in image reconstruction and image recognition.