Communication scheme based on evolutionary spatial 2×22×2 games

• A communication scheme based on evolutionary spatial 2×22×2 games is developed.
• Self-organizing patterns are exploited for hiding secret visual information.
• The secure communication scheme can be effectively used for the information exchange.

A visual communication scheme based on evolutionary spatial 2×22×2 games is proposed in this paper. Self-organizing patterns induced by complex interactions between competing individuals are exploited for hiding and transmitting secret visual information. Properties of the proposed communication scheme are discussed in details. It is shown that the hiding capacity of the system (the minimum size of the detectable primitives and the minimum distance between two primitives) is sufficient for the effective transmission of digital dichotomous images. Also, it is demonstrated that the proposed communication scheme is resilient to time backwards, plain image attacks and is highly sensitive to perturbations of private and public keys. Several computational experiments are used to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed communication scheme.