Security enhanced multiple-image authentication based on cascaded optical interference and sparse phase mixed encoding

An interference-based cascaded filtering method is proposed to perform multiple-image authentication. By using spatial phase mixed encoding technique and phase retrieval iteration in Fresnel transform domain, multiple original images are encoded in two phase-only cipher texts. Using correct keys in an interference-based configuration, one can only recover a noisy image without any secret information revealed. A cascaded phase-only filtering structure, instead of correlation methods, is applied to perform authentication where the decrypted image is converted into a pre-specified irregular pattern that functions as authentication criterion. The proposed structure can strengthen security greatly because authentication output strongly depends on the decrypted images and authentication keys. Moreover, the decryption and authentication procedures can be completed optically in a more compact way than previous methods. Simulation results have been given to prove the effectiveness of this proposal and evaluate its performance.