An Efficient and Fast Image Encryption Scheme Based on a Novel One‐Dimensional Hybrid Chaotic System
Fatma Zohra Terchoune, Elhadi Mehallel, Abdelhalim Rabehi, Takele Ferede Agajie, Mohamed Arbi Khlifi, Abdelaziz Rabehi · IET Image Processing · 2026
ABSTRACT Recently, images have been used widely in a variety of fields, including social media, the military and medicine. Sensitive images are often transmitted over insecure networks and chaotic maps offer effective cryptographic properties for securing these transmissions. One‐dimensional (1D) chaotic maps are commonly employed in data encryption due to their simplicity, high randomness properties, excellent chaotic behaviours and high security levels. However, numerous chaos‐based image encryption algorithms have drawbacks that are generally related to the chaotic systems used and their encryption structures. To overcome these limitations, this paper first proposes a hybrid chaotic system based on 1D‐sine‐logistic‐sine‐tent (1D‐SLST) chaotic maps. Using 1D‐SLST chaotic generators, we produced a new 1D chaotic map exhibiting enhanced chaotic properties compared to the conventional maps. To examine its application in multimedia security, an effective image encryption algorithm is also introduced that leverages the chaotic behaviour of 1D‐SLST. Our algorithm utilises a variety of confusion operations, including zigzag transform, image rotation and pixel confusion. A pixel adaptive diffusion operation based on modulo arithmetic is also introduced. Simulation experiments and security performance evaluations confirm the effectiveness of the proposed scheme, which gives information entropy, NPCR and UACI values of 7.998866, 99.60876% and 33.46990%, respectively, which are close to ideal values. Comparative simulation results indicate that the proposed image encryption algorithm ensures a high level of security and fast encryption speed, achieving superior performance compared to several state‐of‐the‐art methods.