Multiple colour image encryption based on 6D hyperchaotic system with HCM and Fibonacci Q-Matrix
Yashavant Kumar, Vandana Guleria · The Imaging Science Journal · 2025
One of the fundamental principle in the ever-expanding digital realm is ensuring the security of images. Recently, there has been a considerable rise in research interest concerning image encryption. Most colour image encryption techniques rely on two phases: confusion and diffusion. In this paper, we introduce a novel multi-colour image encryption algorithm utilizing mixed elements, 6D hyperchaotic system with Fibonacci Q-matrix and Henon Chaotic Map (HCM). The algorithm consists of four key steps: first, constructing a large image from multiple original colour images. Second, extracting the big image into three colour components R, G and B. Third, the 6D hyperchaotic system is utilized for shuffling pixel positions. Finally, FQ-matrix for diffusion and HCM for additional security enhancement is performed individually on each colour component. The presented image encryption algorithm's strength is evaluated by examining statistical attacks (noise attacks, very large keyspace of 10360, key sensitivity and uniform histogram analysis) and differential attacks (achieving an NPCR of 99.7892% and an UACI of 34.0751% ), indicating high sensitivity to small changes in the plaintext image. Quality assessment further reports a PSNR of 8.3055 dB and an MSE of 1.1320×104, validating strong encryption distortion. Furthermore, the algorithm's effectiveness is measured by comparing it with other studies through information entropy of 7.9992, correlation coefficients (≈0), keyspace, occlusion attack and attack resilience. The security of the present algorithm is very high compared to the existing colour image encryption methods.