A novel multi-image cryptosystem based on weighted plain images and using combined chaotic maps

Abstract This paper introduces a new multi-image cryptosystem based on modified Henon map and nonlinear combination of chaotic seed maps. Based on the degree of correlation between the adjacent pixels of the plain image, a unique weight is assigned to the plain image. First, the coordinates of plain images are disrupted by modified Henon map as confusion phase. In the first step of diffusion phase, the pixels content of images are changed separately by XOR operation between confused images and matrices with suitable nonlinear combination of seed maps sequences. These combination of seed maps are selected depending on the weight of plain images as well as bifurcation properties of mentioned chaotic maps. After concatenating the matrices obtained from the first step of diffusion phase, the bitwise XOR operation is applied between newly developed matrix and the other produced matrix from the chaotic sequences of the Logistic-Tent-Sine hybrid system, as second step of diffusion phase. The encrypted image is obtained after applying shift and exchange operations. The results of the implementation using graphs and histograms show that the proposed scheme, compared to some existing methods, can effectively resist common attacks and can be used as a secure method for encrypting digital images.