Steganographic optical encryption via computational ghost imaging through a dynamic scattering medium

This paper proposes a steganographic optical image encryption system that capitalizes on CGI with a dynamic scattering medium. In the encryption process, a chaotic mapping function is utilized to generate illumination patterns. These patterns are then used in CGI to encode the non-secret and secret images under two distinct scenarios: free-space and dynamic scattering space. Subsequently, without disturbing the overall distribution of the non-secret image's bucket signal, the measurements of the secret image are integrated into those of the non-secret image to generate the ciphertext. In the decryption process, the target bucket signal is initially extracted from the ciphertext. Then, it undergoes a rectification algorithm to eliminate the disruptions caused by the dynamic scattering medium, ensuring the successful reconstruction of the target image. The experimental results confirm the feasibility of this approach and highlight the potential of indirect imaging for optical encryption through dynamic scattering media.