A new encryption algorithm for image cryptosystems

There are two major differences of the characteristics of the text data and image data. One difference is that the size of image data is usually much larger than that of text data. The other is that plain data rarely permit l oss when a compression technique is used, but image data do. In this paper, we design an efficient cryptosystem for images. Our method is based on vec tor quantization, which is one of the popular image compression techniques. Our method can achieve the following two goals. One goal is to design a hi gh security image cryptosystem. The other goal is to reduce computational c omplexity of the encryption and decryption algorithms. (C) 2001 Elsevier Sc ience Inc. All rights reserved.