Optical encryption using a liquid phase mask

Abstract

Liquid surface patterns are used for the first time in random phase mask optical image encryption. Time-dependence from the liquid surface patterns can potentially remove known-plaintext attack vulnerabilities. Simulations were conducted to investigate the security of such a system. The system is shown to maintain the maximum entropy in the encrypted images without leaving a significant correlation with the liquid surface patterns. Significant error between recovered and plaintext images when a mismatched liquid surface pattern is used for decryption demonstrates the ability of the liquid system to vary the encryption and decryption of images with a tunable surface.