Image encryption and decryption using graph theory

Through the application of the ideas presented in graph theory, this work presents a novel approach to the protection of picture data. The approach that has been developed takes into account the pixels that make up the digital picture as vertices of a network and forms edges between the vertices, assigning a certain amount of meaningful weight to each connection. The encryption and decryption procedure for the colour digital picture is presented. This approach makes use of the minimum spanning tree (MST) and the weighted adjacency matrix of the MST. For the purpose of validating the practicability and robustness of the suggested approach, the experimental findings and the security analysis of the proposed methodology are presented. In order to demonstrate that the suggested approach is resistant to statistical assaults, statistical analysis techniques such as histogram, correlation, and entropy were used. It has also been shown via the results of the experiments that the suggested method is resistant to assaults including brute force and occlusion.