Secure image compression approach based on fusion of 3D chaotic maps and arithmetic coding

Abstract

Advances in digital image processing and communications have created a great demand for real-time secure image transmission over the networks. However, the development of effective, fast and secure dependent image compression-encryption systems are still a research problem as the intrinsic features of images. A new approach is suggested in this study for partial image encryption-compression that adopts chaotic three-dimensional (3D) cat map to de-correlate relations among pixels in conjunction with an adaptive thresholding technique that is utilised as a lossy compression technique instead of using complex quantisation techniques and also as a substitution technique to increase the security of the cipher image. The proposed scheme is based on employing both of lossless compression with encryption on the most significant part of the image after contourlet transform. However, the least significant parts are lossy compressed by employing a simple thresholding rule and arithmetic coding to render the image totally unrecognisable. Due to the weakness of 3D cat map to chosen plain text attack, the suggested scheme incorporates a mechanism to generate random key depending on the contents of the image (context key). Several experiments were done on benchmark images to insure the validity of the proposed technique.