The network security transmission of digital images needs to solve the dual security problems of content and appearance. In this paper, a visually secure image compression and encryption scheme is proposed by combining compressed sensing (CS) and regional energy. The plain image is compressed and encrypted into a secret image by CS and zigzag confusion. Then, according to the regional energy, the secret image is embedded into a carrier image to obtain the final visual secure cipher image. A method of hour hand printing (HHP) scrambling is proposed to increase the pixel irrelevance. Regional energy embedding reduce the damage to the visual quality of carrier image, and the different embedding positions between images greatly enhances the security of the encryption algorithm. Furthermore, the hyperchaotic multi-character system (MCS) is utilized to construct measurement matrix and control pixels. Simulation results and security analyses demonstrate the effectiveness, security and robustness of the propose algorithm.
Keywords: compressed sensing; image encryption; multi-character chaotic system; regional energy.