Optical multiple-image authentication based on computational ghost imaging and hybrid non-convex second-order total variation.

An optical security method for multiple-image authentication is proposed based on computational ghost imaging and hybrid non-convex second-order total variation. Firstly, each original image to be authenticated is encoded to the sparse information using computational ghost imaging, where illumination patterns are generated based on Hadamard matrix. In the same time, the cover image is divided into four sub-images with wavelet transform. Secondly, one of sub-images with low-frequency coefficients is decomposed using singular value decomposition (SVD), and all sparse data are embedded into the diagonal matrix with the help of binary masks. To enhance the security, the generalized Arnold transform is used to scramble the modified diagonal matrix. After using SVD again, the marked cover image carrying the information of multiple original images is obtained using the inverse wavelet transform. In the authentication process, the quality of each reconstructed image can be greatly improved based on hybrid non-convex second-order total variation. Even at a very low sampling ratio (i.e., 6%), the existence of original images can be efficiently verified using the nonlinear correlation maps. To our knowledge, it is first to embed sparse data into the high-frequency sub-image using two cascaded SVDs, which can guarantee high robustness against the Gaussian filter and sharpen filter. The optical experiments demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed mechanism, which can provide an effective alternative for the multiple-image authentication.