Scalable encryption using alpha rooting
Eric J. Wharton, Karen A. Panetta, Sos С. Agaian · Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE · 2008
Full and partial encryption methods are important for subscription based content providers, such as internet and cable TV pay channels. Providers need to be able to protect their products while at the same time being able to provide demonstrations to attract new customers without giving away the full value of the content. If an algorithm were introduced which could provide any level of full or partial encryption in a fast and cost effective manner, the applications to real-time commercial implementation would be numerous. In this paper, we present a novel application of alpha rooting, using it to achieve fast and straightforward scalable encryption with a single algorithm. We further present use of the measure of enhancement, the Logarithmic AME, to select optimal parameters for the partial encryption. When parameters are selected using the measure, the output image achieves a balance between protecting the important data in the image while still containing a good overall representation of the image. We will show results for this encryption method on a number of images, using histograms to evaluate the effectiveness of the encryption.