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Integrating adaptive MSB prediction with hybrid chaotic maps for thumbnail-preserving encryption: the TPE-HC approach
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DOI:10.1007/s11071-026-12951-5.png)
Abstract
En 中文
To address the challenge of balancing privacy and usability for images in cloud storage, this paper proposes a novel thumbnail-preserving encryption scheme, TPE-HC, which integrates hybrid chaotic maps with adaptive most significant bit (MSB) prediction. The framework operates in three stages: (1) An adaptive MSB prediction mechanism embeds the MSBs of central-area pixels into the edge area, creating a vacated image with embedded recovery markers. (2) A dual-chaotic system (3D Logistic map and enhanced Chirikov map) performs cascaded confusion and permutation on the vacated image, generating a noise-like encrypted image. (3) Block-level MSB adjustment is applied to the encrypted image’s center to preserve an approximate thumbnail of the original. This design leverages the human visual attention mechanism, keeping the thumbnail recognizable in the center while allowing lossless reconstruction via metadata in the edges. Extensive experiments on five standard test images (with block sizes from 8 $$\times $$ 8 to 64 $$\times $$ 64) demonstrate the scheme’s effectiveness. The recovered images achieve a PSNR of $$+\infty $$ dB and an SSIM of 1.0, confirming perfect reversibility. The scheme also exhibits a large key space ( $$ 2^{384}$$ ), high resistance to differential attacks (NPCR $$\approx $$ 99.4%, UACI $$\approx $$ 9.4%), and robust defense against super-resolution, AI-based, and statistical attacks. The TPE-HC scheme thus provides a practical solution that harmonizes security, reversibility, and visual usability for cloud-stored images.
Keywords:
Image encryption
Thumbnail preserving encryption
Chaotic map
Cloud security
Adaptive MSB prediction
Journal
IF:
6
Papers:
1.4W
Citations:
4.1W
