Asymmetric color image encryption based on singular value decomposition

A novel asymmetric color image encryption approach by using singular value decomposition (SVD) is proposed. The original color image is encrypted into a ciphertext shown as an indexed image by using the proposed method. The red, green and blue components of the color image are subsequently encoded into a complex function which is then separated into U, S and V parts by SVD. The data matrix of the ciphertext is obtained by multiplying orthogonal matrices U and V while implementing phase-truncation. Diagonal entries of the three diagonal matrices of the SVD results are abstracted and scrambling combined to construct the colormap of the ciphertext. Thus, the encrypted indexed image covers less space than the original image. For decryption, the original color image cannot be recovered without private keys which are obtained from phase-truncation and the orthogonality of V. Computer simulations are presented to evaluate the performance of the proposed algorithm. We also analyze the security of the proposed system.