A new approach to chaotic image encryption based on quantum chaotic system, exploiting color spaces

How to protect the secret information is an important issue in commercial or military application. Attributed to quantum chaotic system that can be characterized by sensitive dependence to initial conditions/parameters, a new color image encryption scheme based on quantum chaotic system is proposed in this paper. Firstly, a new substitution scheme is achieved based on toral automorphism in integer wavelet transform by scrambling only the Y (Luminance) component of low frequency subband. Then two diffusion modules are achieved by mixing the features of horizontally and vertically adjacent pixels with the help of adopted quantum chaotic map. Finally, substitution/confusion is accomplished by generating an intermediate chaotic key stream image with the help of quantum chaotic system. Several security and performance analyses have been provided thoroughly based on several experimental tests and analysis. Brilliant characteristics of the proposed color image encryption approach are enough security and good performance. Through comparison, most of the results are in favor of the proposed scheme. (C) 2013 Published by Elsevier B.V.