A VIRTUAL IMAGE CRYPTOSYSTEM BASED UPON VECTOR QUANTIZATION

We propose a new image cryptosystem to protect image data. It encrypts the original image into another virtual image. Since both original an d virtual images are significant, our new cryptosystem can confuse ill egal users. Besides the camouflage, this new cryptosystem has three ot her benefits. First, our cryptosystem is secure even if the illegal us ers know that our virtual image is a camouflage. Second, this cryptosy stem can compress image data. Finally, our method is more efficient th an a method that encrypts the entire image directly.