Visually Meaningful Image Encryption Scheme Based on DWT and Schur Decomposition

A visually meaningful image encryption scheme with an asymmetric structure based on the discrete wavelet transform (DWT) and Schur decomposition is proposed in this study. First, the RSA algorithm is used to generate the initial values for the chaotic system to produce the random sequence. Then, both scrambling and diffusion operations are performed on the plain image to obtain the preencrypted image. Moreover, the Schur decomposition is applied on the preencrypted plain image to obtain the upper triangular and orthogonal matrices. Second, the cover image is scrambled followed by a DWT operation. Four subbands are then formed, namely, LL, HL, LH, and HH. Finally, the former upper triangular matrix and orthogonal matrix are embedded into subbands LH and HH produced by the cover image. After the application of the inverse DWT and inverse scrambling operation, the final visually meaningful cover image embedded with a secret plain image can be obtained. No one can identify any useful information about the plain image from the final embedded cover image, nor can anybody know that there is any hidden secret image. Experimental simulations show that the normalized correlation values between the original cover image and the final visually meaningful cover image are approximately 0.9997. Therefore, the proposed encryption scheme is imperceptible for secret image communications.