entropy

Article
A Security-Enhanced Image Communication Scheme Using
Cellular Neural Network
Heping Wen 1,2,3 , Jiajun Xu 1 , Yunlong Liao 1 , Ruiting Chen 1 , Danze Shen 1 , Lifei Wen 1 , Yulin Shi 1 , Qin Lin 1 ,
Zhonghao Liang 1 , Sihang Zhang 1 , Yuxuan Liu 1 , Ailin Huo 1 , Tong Li 1 , Chang Cai 1 , Jiaqian Wen 1
and Chongfu Zhang 1,2, *

1 Zhongshan Institute, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Zhongshan 528402, China;
[email protected] (H.W.); [email protected] (J.X.); [email protected] (Y.L.);
[email protected] (R.C.); [email protected] (D.S.); [email protected] (L.W.);
[email protected] (Y.S.); [email protected] (Q.L.); [email protected] (Z.L.);
[email protected] (S.Z.); [email protected] (Y.L.); [email protected] (A.H.);
[email protected] (T.L.); [email protected] (C.C.); [email protected] (J.W.)
2 School of Information and Communication Engineering, University of Electronic Science and Technology of
China, Chengdu 611731, China
3 Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Information Security Technology, Guangzhou 510006, China
* Correspondence: [email protected]

Abstract: In the current network and big data environment, the secure transmission of digital images
is facing huge challenges. The use of some methodologies in artificial intelligence to enhance its
security is extremely cutting-edge and also a development trend. To this end, this paper proposes a





 security-enhanced image communication scheme based on cellular neural network (CNN) under
cryptanalysis. First, the complex characteristics of CNN are used to create pseudorandom sequences
Citation: Wen, H.; Hu, J.; Liao, Y.;
Chen, R.; Shen, D.; Wen, L.; Shi, Y.;
for image encryption. Then, a plain image is sequentially confused, permuted and diffused to get the
Lin, Q.; Liang, Z.; Zhang, S.; et al. A cipher image by these CNN-based sequences. Based on cryptanalysis theory, a security-enhanced
Security-Enhanced Image algorithm structure and relevant steps are detailed. Theoretical analysis and experimental results
Communication Scheme Using both demonstrate its safety performance. Moreover, the structure of image cipher can effectively
Cellular Neural Network. Entropy resist various common attacks in cryptography. Therefore, the image communication scheme based
2021, 23, 1000. https://doi.org/ on CNN proposed in this paper is a competitive security technology method.
10.3390/e23081000

Keywords: secure communication; image encryption; chaos; cellular neural network

Academic Editor: Amelia Carolina
Sparavigna

Received: 23 June 2021

1. Introduction
Accepted: 28 July 2021
Published: 31 July 2021
With the rapid development of cloud computing, big data, blockchain and other
emerging technologies, the privacy and sharing of messages provides convenience for
Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral
people in their work and daily lives [1–4]. However, the convenience also threatens the
with regard to jurisdictional claims in
security of cyberspace [5–8]. In particular, as a significant transmission medium, digital
published maps and institutional affil- images may include a lot of personal privacy, confidential information and other important
iations. data, so their privacy protection gets more attention [9–12]. Encryption technology is
a common means to assure the security of digital images, and has been widely used
in various fields of digital image security [13–17]. Currently, there exist many mature
block encryption schemes that are widely used in text encryption and these schemes
Copyright: © 2021 by the authors.
have brilliant effects [18,19]. Nevertheless, due to the uniqueness of the image, such
Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.
as being two-dimensional, redundancy and a strong correlation of two adjacent pixels,
This article is an open access article
traditional text encryption faces severe challenges [20–22]. Moreover, the problem of real-
distributed under the terms and time transmission should be considered in image encryption to improve the communication
conditions of the Creative Commons performance [9,23,24]. Therefore, it is quite necessary to study the new technologies and
Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// methods of image encryption.
creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ In current international studies, digital image encryption is a research hotspot [25–27].
4.0/). Various mechanisms and methods are introduced to enhance the security of algorithms [28,29].

Entropy 2021, 23, 1000. https://doi.org/10.3390/e23081000 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/entropy

Entropy 2021, 23, 1000 2 of 17

In 2015, the authors of [16] proposed a multibiometric template protection scheme based
on fuzzy commitment and a chaos-based system, as well as a security analysis method
of unimodal biometrics leakage. The chaos-based system is used to encrypt the dual iris
feature vectors. The experimental results show that the security of BCH ECC (1,023,123,170)
based on multibiometrics template is improved from 80.53 bits to 167.80 bits. In 2017, the
authors of [30] designed a special image encryption scheme based on the second-order
Henon mapping hyperchaos and the fifth-order CNN. Experimental results show that
the scheme features high security and is suitable to spread in the network. At the same
time, in [31] a new image encryption method was proposed, based on the biological DNA
sequences operation and the third-order CNN. The method could effectively enhance the
plaintext sensitivity and features large key space and high security. In 2019, the authors
of [17] proposed a new privacy protection encryption mechanism for medical systems
based on the Internet of Things. Experimental results show that the encryption mechanism
is robust and effective to protect the privacy of patients. In 2020, Zhang and Zhang [32]
used the Chen chaos-based system and two-dimensional logistic mapping to propose a
multi-image encryption system based on bitplane and chaos. The experiment also proved
its high efficiency. At the same time, in [15] a new and effective color image cryptosystem
was proposed. The experimental results show that the cryptosystem has high security
efficiency and can be effectively applied to the IoHT framework of secure medical image
transmission. In summary, more and more theories and technological achievements have
been made in digital image encryption. However, in current studies, most digital images are
regarded as a two-dimensional matrix to encrypt, meaning that only the spatial domain is
processed [6,33–35]. However, two defects were exposed: (1) Some encryption algorithms
have security flaws and are not associated with plaintext, so it is difficult for them to
resist chosen-plaintext attack (CPA); (2) The cost of attacking the encryption algorithm is
relatively low because chaos-based systems are relatively simple.
Aimed at solving the existing problems, we put forward a digital image encryption
algorithm based on CNN in this paper. On the one hand, a CNN chaos-based system
is selected to generate a chaos-based key sequence. The CNN chaos-based system has
more complex behavioral characteristics, so it has better security performance than other
encryption systems. On the other hand, the scheme adopts the security mechanism of
generating a chaos-based key sequence by plaintext correlation. Therefore, compared with
other encryption schemes based on a CNN chaos-based system, it effectively enhances
the ability to resist CPA. Theoretical analysis and experimental results show that the
proposed algorithm can effectively enhance the confusion, diffusion and avalanche effect
of encryption. Therefore, the image encryption algorithm based on CNN is reliable.

2. Correlation Theory
The idea of a cellular neural network (CNN) was conceived by Chua and Yang in
1988 [34]. The basic units of CNN are called cells, and each cell is a nonlinear first-order
circuit which is composed of a linear resistor, a linear capacitor and a voltage-controlled
current source [36,37].
In order to make the mathematical model of CNN more comprehensible, a simplified
CNN cell model is adopted:

dx j
= − x j + A j p j + Go + Gs + Ij (1)
dt
where j is used as a cell marker, x j represents the state variable, A j represents a constant
number, Ij represents the threshold value, Gs and Go separately represent the linear combi-
nation of the state variables of the cell and the output value of the connecting cell, and p j
represents the output of the cell.
Entropy 2021, 23, 1000 3 of 17

The fourth-order fully interconnected CNN equation can be defined as follows:

4 4

dx j
= −xj + Aj pj + ∑ A jk p j + ∑ S jk xk + Ij


dt
k =1;k 6= j k =1 (2)

p j = 0.5 x j + 1 − 0.5 x j − 1


where S represents a matrix of j × k, A j and Ij both represent a matrix of j × 1, A jk =

0( j 6= k, j = 1, 2, 3, 4; k = 1, 2, 3, 4) and it can be described by the equation of state in
Equation (2) [38]: 
dx1

 = − x3 − εx4
dt




dx

 2 = 2x2 + x3



dt (3)
dx
 3 = 14x − 14x

 1 2
 dt



 dx4


 = 200p4 + 100x1 − 100x4
dt
where ε is the control parameter of the CNN model, which can control the size and quantity
of Lyapunov exponents, and the range of values for ε is 0 to 2. At this moment, the system
is in a chaos-based state, and four aperiodic chaos-based sequences can be generated
from it, which are very sensitive to the initial conditions x1 (0), x2 (0), x3 (0) and x4 (0).
By calculating the Lyapunov exponents of Equation (3), it can be seen that the Lyapunov
exponents of the four chaos-based sequences tend to 42.8487, 2.0230, −0.0230 and −49.0391,
respectively, two of which are positive. Therefore, the CNN model is a hyperchaotic system,
and the Lyapunov exponents are shown in Figure 1. When the initial values of x1 (0), x2 (0),
x3 (0) and x4 (0) are 0.2, 0.2, 0.2 and 0.2, respectively, we use the fourth-order Runge–Kutta
algorithm with the step size of h=0.005 to get the two-dimensional chaos-based attractor,
as shown in Figure 2a–d and the three-dimensional chaos-based attractor, as shown in
Figure 2e–h.

80 2.5 -20
2
60 -40
1.5
LE

LE

LE

40 1 -60
0.5
20 -80
0
0 -0.5 -100
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 0 0.5 1 1.5 2 0 0.5 1 1.5 2

(a) (b) (c)

Figure 1. Lyapunov exponents spectrum. The exponents tend to 42.8487, 2.0230 and −0.0230, and −49.0391, as can be seen
in (a), (b) and (c), respectively.

(a) (b) (c) (d)

Figure 2. Cont.
Entropy 2021, 23, 1000 4 of 17

(e) (f) (g) (h)

Figure 2. Chaos-based attractors generated by the fourth-order CNN: (a) x1 , x2 ; (b) x1 , x3 ; (c) x1 , x4 ; (d) x2 , x4 ; (e) x1 , x2 , x3 ;
(f) x1 , x2 , x4 ; (g) x1 , x3 , x4 ; (h) x4 , x3 , x2 .

3. The Proposed Encryption Algorithm

The encryption algorithm of chaos-based image usually adopts the classical structure
“permutation–diffusion” [39,40]. However, due to the lack of security, a chaos-based image
encryption algorithm based on a “confusion–permutation–diffusion” structure is proposed
in this paper [35].
The encryption and decryption processes are shown in Figure 3. IEA-CNN represents
the image encryption algorithm based on a cellular neural network, IDA-CNN represents
the image decryption algorithm based on a cellular neural network. In order to enhance
the ability to resist CPA, the image encryption system of this paper adopts the security
mechanisms of chaos-based key sequences produced by plaintext association and ciphertext
feedback diffusion encryption. The specific steps of the encryption algorithm are given as
follows:
Step 1: Preprocessing Sequences
The secret key of the image encryption algorithm contains the Message-Digest Al-
gorithm 5 (MD5) value of plain image, the initial value of the fourth-order CNN and the
controlling parameters. The MD5 can be used to disturb the initial value key parameters
of CNN chaos; so that the key sequence changes with different plain images, the specific
treatment methods are calculated using the following formulas:



 x10 (0) = x1 (0) + (m1 ⊕ m2 ⊕ m3 ⊕ m4 )/256

 x 0 (0)

= x2 (0) + (m5 ⊕ m6 ⊕ m7 ⊕ m8 )/256
2
(4)
 x30 (0)

 = x3 (0) + (m9 ⊕ m10 ⊕ m11 ⊕ m12 )/256

 0

x4 (0) = x4 (0) + (m13 ⊕ m14 ⊕ m15 ⊕ m16 )/256

where ⊕ is bitwise XOR operation, x1 (0), x2 (0), x3 (0) and x4 (0) are the initial values of the
fourth-order CNN key parameters; x1 0 (0), x2 0 (0), x3 0 (0) and x4 0 (0) are the initial values
updated after the disturbance from MD5. Obviously, the new initial values will change with
the different plain images. Then, a preprocessing operation is adopted for the chaos-based
sequences. The generating methods of obfuscated sequences are shown as follows:


 real_X = [ x1 ; x2 ; x3 ; x4 ]

Kc 0 = f loor ( mod (real_X × 1010 , 256)) (5)

Kc = reshape Kc 0 , H, W



where real_X is composed of four sequences produced by the fourth-order CNN chaos-
based system. The sequences diagram of four sequences generated by chaos-based map-
ping of the fourth-order CNN is shown in Figure 4. The size of Kc is equal to H × W, H
Entropy 2021, 23, 1000 5 of 17

and W are pixel rows and pixel columns of the plain images for image confusion. The
generating method of permutation sequences is shown as follows:

seq_H = x2 (1, 1 : H )


seq_W = x (2, 1 : 8 × W )

3
(6)


 [value1 , K pr ] = sort(seq_H )

[value , K ] = sort(seq_W )
2 pc

where sort is the sorting function of array elements; x2 represents a two-dimensional se-
quence of real_X; x3 represents the three-dimensional sequence of real_X; seq_H represents
the chaos-based sequence of length H extracted from x2 ; real_W represents the chaos-based
sequence of length 8 × W extracted from x3 ; K pr means that the pixel row is generated by
the sorting function and the length is H; K pc means that the pixel column is generated by
the sorting function and the length is 8 × W; value1 and value2 are the sorted chaos-based
sequence values.
The generating method of diffusion sequences is shown as follows:

 K = mod( f loor ([ x , x , x , x ] × 105 ), 256)
d 1 3 2 4
(7)
 K 0 = mod( f loor ([ x , x , x , x ] × 105 ), 256)
d 3 4 1 2

where the lengths of Kd and Kd 0 are H × W, and the key sequences of Kd and Kd 0 are used
for diffusion.
Step 2: Confusion
The key sequence Kc is used to obfuscate the plain image P. The image can be
visualized and hidden to get the obfuscated image I1 , the method is shown as follows:

I1 (i ) = Kc (i ) ⊕ P(i ), i = (1, 2, · · · , H × W ) (8)

Step 3: Permutation
The key sequences K pr (i ) and K pc ( j) are used to replace the pixels in I1 to get I3 ,
the method is shown as follows:

 I = swap I :, K (i )
, I (:, i )

2 1 pc 1
(9)
 I = swap I K pr ( j), :
, I ( j, :)

3 2 2

where swap function is used to swap the values of two pixels. The number of bit level rows
is equal to the number of pixel level rows, and the number of bit level columns is equal to
8 times the number of pixel level columns, thus, i = 1, 2, · · · , H and j = 1, 2, · · · , 8 × W. I2
and I3 are the images after double bit column transform and row transform permutation,
respectively.
Step 4: Diffusion
All the ciphertext pixels in I3 are diffused dynamically. Kd and Kd0 are used for the
image diffusion operation to generate the final ciphertext image C.
The first ciphertext pixel C (1) is generated, and the diffusion encryption equation is
shown as follows:

 C (1) = I3 (1) ⊕ Kd (1) ⊕ (sum(1)+̇Kd 0 (1))

L (10)
 sum(1) = ∑ I3 (i )

i =1

∆
where the operator +̇ can be defined as a+̇b = mod ( a + b, 256), I3 (1) is the first pixel of
the permutation image I3 , Kd (1) and Kd 0 (1) are the first element of the diffusion encryption
sequences, and sum(1) represents the sum of all pixels of the permutation image I3 .
Entropy 2021, 23, 1000 6 of 17

Then ciphertext pixel C (i ) is produced and its diffusion formula is shown as follows:

 C (i ) = I (i ) ⊕ (C (i − 1)+̇K (i )) ⊕ (sum(i )+̇K 0 (i ))
3 d d
(11)
 sum(i ) = sum(i − 1) − I (i )
3

where i = 2, 3, . . . , L and the i represents the ith pixel of the permutation image I3 . C (i − 1)
is the (i − 1)th ciphertext pixel. sum(i ) is the sum of the ( L − i + 1) pixels of the permutation
image I3 . According to Equation (11), starting from the second ciphertext pixel C (2),
the cipher image C is generated by computing iteratively C (i ), i in {1, 2, · · · , L}, until the
Lth ciphertext C ( L) is generated.
Decryption is the inverse process of encryption, whose process is first confusion, then
permutation, and finally diffusion. While the decryption process is to first reverse diffuse
the encrypted image, then reverse permutate the reverse diffuse image, and finally reverse
confuse the reverse permutation image to get the decrypted image. When the decryption
key and the encryption key are matched, the image can be restored correctly. However,
when the decryption key is not equal to the encryption key, even if there is a small error,
the correct image cannot be decrypted.

The key of image encryption:{MD5 } The key of image decryption:{MD5 }

IEA-CNN IDA-CNN

CNN chaotic system CNN chaotic system

Reverse Reverse Reverse

Confusion Permutation Diffusion diffusion permutation confusion

Plain image Encryption Cipher image Cipher image Decryption Plain image

Figure 3. Principle and mechanism of image encryption and decryption.

10
x1
xn (n=1, 2, 3, 4)

5 x2
x3
0
x4
-5

-10
0 2000 4000 6000 8000
t
Figure 4. Sequence diagram of the fourth-order CNN.

4. Experimental Verification and Discussion

In the analysis of the experimental results, we use MATLAB 2020b to simulate and
validate the proposed image encryption system which is executed on a PC with Windows
10 64 bit operating system, Intel (R) Core (TM) i7-8250 CPU @ 1.60 GHz 1.80 GHz processor
and 8 GB memory. In order to prove the effectiveness and practicability of the proposed
image encryption scheme, we selected the images from “USC-SIPI Image Database” and
“Ground Truth Database” as the test images [41,42].
Entropy 2021, 23, 1000 7 of 17

4.1. Key Space Analysis

In the encryption system, the range of valid value of key can be expressed by key
space. The image encryption algorithm designed in this paper uses a fourth-order CNN
system and the secret key parameters involved are the initial values of the fourth-order
CNN chaos-based system x1 (0), x2 (0), x3 (0), x4 (0). Because the computer precision used
in experimental simulation is 10−15 , the size of this part of encryption system key space
is (1015 )4 = 1060 ≈ 2199 . Considering that MD5 of 128 bits can also be used as part of the
secret key, the total secret key space 2327 and the encryption system can resist the exhaustive
attack effectively [43,44].

4.2. Nist 800-22 Test

The NIST 800-22 test is an internationally recognized random number test. It consists
of 16 different tests. As long as the 16 test results are greater than or equal to 0.001,
the random array can be considered to be qualified. In this test, we divide the generated
3,000,000 bits of byte stream data into 10 segments of 300,000 bits. The Kc , K pr , K pc , Kd
and Kd0 sequences needed in encryption passed the test successfully, and the test results
of the Kd0 sequence are shown in Table 1. The experimental results show that the random
numbers generated by our algorithm fully conform to the international standard, and have
strong randomness.

Table 1. NIST-800-22 test results.

p-Values
Statistical Tests Result
Seq1 Seq2 Seq3 Seq4 Seq5 Seq6 Seq7 Seq8 Seq9 Seq10

ApproximateEntropy Text 0.8094 0.1941 0.0781 0.3518 0.4390 0.3812 0.4203 0.1690 0.1884 0.0589 Successful
BlockFrequency Text 0.9347 0.2822 0.9547 0.0925 0.6961 0.4518 0.1352 0.4160 0.3816 0.1934 Successful
CumulativeSums Text-1 0.7034 0.9290 0.7701 0.4770 0.0354 0.6270 0.4488 0.2083 0.4378 0.5493 Successful
CumulativeSums Text-2 0.8561 0.9968 0.8754 0.7377 0.0426 0.2912 0.2621 0.1019 0.3783 0.1853 Successful
FFT Text 0.9732 0.9066 0.4508 0.2911 0.4921 0.1912 0.8145 0.4508 0.0226 0.1359 Successful
Frequency Text 0.8666 0.8408 0.9040 0.4541 0.0235 0.6507 0.7674 0.1743 0.9330 0.5541 Successful
LinearComplexity Text 0.2833 0.8136 0.5262 0.2415 0.6749 0.4776 0.9849 0.2676 0.8014 0.3305 Successful
LongestRun Text 0.3615 0.2823 0.5065 0.4150 0.7894 0.7386 0.0683 0.1561 0.5800 0.2138 Successful
OverlappingTemplate Text 0.2713 0.8537 0.8457 0.6464 0.2555 0.1803 0.4144 0.9091 0.7819 0.7349 Successful
Rank Text 0.6985 0.1675 0.6198 0.2927 0.5757 0.3860 0.3147 0.8761 0.3737 0.2093 Successful
Runs Text 0.6066 0.6691 0.6771 0.2721 0.3432 0.1041 0.5789 0.7783 0.6718 0.6011 Successful
Serial Text-1 0.0096 0.8837 0.0110 0.5441 0.1669 0.0331 0.8454 0.1955 0.7045 0.6886 Successful
Serial Text-2 0.1784 0.6697 0.2170 0.5832 0.0293 0.3877 0.9621 0.4920 0.7287 0.5582 Successful

4.3. Histogram Analysis

There are three channels—R, G and B—in color images; the abscissa of the histogram
containing these three channels reflects the statistical characteristics of the distribution
of every pixel [45,46]. Different plain images and cipher images, as well as their relevant
histograms, are shown in Figure 5. The experimental results show that the pixel values
of the R, G and B channels of color cipher image are almost uniformly distributed, so the
influence of statistical analysis is greatly eliminated [47,48].
Entropy 2021, 23, 1000 8 of 17

10000 800

600

Frequency

Frequency
5000 400

200

0 0
0 50 100 150 200 250 0 50 100 150 200 250
Pixel gray value Pixel gray value
(a) (b) (c) (d)

4000 800

3000 600
Frequency

Frequency
2000 400

1000 200

0 0
0 50 100 150 200 250 0 50 100 150 200 250
Pixel gray value Pixel gray value
(e) (f) (g) (h)

3000 800

600
Frequency

Frequency
2000
400
1000
200

0 0
0 50 100 150 200 250 0 50 100 150 200 250
Pixel gray value Pixel gray value
(i) (j) (k) (l)

10000 800

600
Frequency
Frequency

5000 400

200

0 0
0 50 100 150 200 250 0 50 100 150 200 250
Pixel gray value Pixel gray value
(m) (n) (o) (p)

Figure 5. The histograms of images before and after encryption: (a) plain image of “Zhong shan”; (b) histogram of the
plain image of “Zhong shan”; (c) cipher image of “Zhong shan”; (d) histogram of the cipher image of “Zhong shan”;
(e) plain image of “Greenlake10”; (f) histogram of the plain image of “Greenlake10”; (g) cipher image of “Greenlake10”;
(h) histogram of the cipher image of “Greenlake10”; (i) plain image of “Greenlake13”; (j) histogram of the plain image of
“Greenlake13”; (k) cipher image of “Greenlake13”; (l) histogram of the cipher image of “Greenlake13”; (m) plain image
of “Greenlake47”; (n) histogram of the plain image of “Greenlake47”; (o) cipher image of “Greenlake47”; (p) histogram of
cipher image of “Greenlake47”.

4.4. Correlation Analysis

For the plain image, the correlation between adjacent pixels is strong [49,50]. Gray
value of a pixel tends to be close to the gray values of its adjacent pixels. Therefore,
the attacker can speculate about the gray value of a pixel from the gray value of its adjacent
pixels [51,52]. An encryption system with good performance should satisfy the requirement
that adjacent pixels of cipher image have low correlation coefficients to each other in order
Entropy 2021, 23, 1000 9 of 17

to resist the statistical attack. Correlation coefficients are commonly used to measure the
correlation of two pixels and the calculations of it are defined as [53,54]:

N
E( x ) = N1 ∑ xi





 i =1
N

 D ( x ) = N1 ∑ ( xi − E( x ))2



i =1 (12)
N
cov( x, y) = N1 ∑ ( xi − E( x ))(yi − E(y))






 i =1
 γxy = √ cov( x,y
√)



D ( x )× D (y)

where the gray value of every pixel is represented by x and y, while E( x ) represents the
mean value, D ( x ) represents the variance, cov( x, y) represents the covariance and γxy
represents the correlation coefficients.
The correlation coefficients before and after encryption of the selected image are
shown in Table 2 where “Anti-Diag”. represents the correlation coefficient in the anti-
diagonal direction. Figure 6 shows the correlation of plain image and cipher image in
horizontal, vertical, diagonal and anti-diagonal directions. It can be seen that there is no
obvious correlation between adjacent pixels of a cipher image. Therefore, the cipher images
encrypted by the algorithm designed in this paper have high security and can resist the
statistical analysis [55].

Table 2. Correlation coefficients of two adjacent pixels.

Plain Image Cipher Image

Pictures
Vert. Horiz. Diag. Anti-Diag. Vert. Horiz. Diag. Anti-Diag.

7.1.02.tiff 0.9480 0.9429 0.9113 0.9456 −0.0021 0.0303 0.0087 −0.0002

7.1.09.tiff 0.9309 0.9654 0.9208 0.9207 −0.0083 −0.0257 −0.0354 −0.0225
5.1.12.tiff 0.9709 0.9608 0.9429 0.9403 −0.0256 −0.0035 0.0040 −0.0157
5.2.10.tiff 0.9415 0.9364 0.9032 0.9015 0.0032 0.0163 −0.0069 −0.0107

4.5. Sensitivity Analysis

Key sensitivity is an essential indicator of the security of the encryption system. It
represents the difference in the decryption results when the same cipher image is decrypted
with slightly different keys. For the sake of detecting the susceptibility of the scheme to the
key, the first three sequences generated by the initial key are superimposed and combined
into a color map, and the minimum precision of x1 (0) is 10−15 . The initial key x1 (0) is
perturbed with the minimum precision to generate four new sequences, and the first three
new sequences are superimposed and combined into a new color map. The two color
images are differentiated to get the difference image and the histogram corresponding
to the difference image. The initial key x2 (0) is processed in the same way, as shown in
Figure 7. By adding 10−3 to the initial key x1 (0), four sequences are obtained through
cellular neural chaos, and these four sequences are compared with the four sequences
generated by no change of x1 (0), as shown in Figure 8. It can be seen from Figures 7 and 8
that the encryption system designed in this paper has high security and strong sensitivity
to keys, which increases the difficulty for attackers to decipher the cipher image.
Entropy 2021, 23, 1000 10 of 17

Pixel value on location(x+1,y+1)

Pixel value on location(x-1,y+1)

Pixel value on location(x+1,y)

Pixel value on location(x,y+1)

300 300 300 300

250 250 250 250

200 200 200 200

150 150 150 150

100 100 100 100

50 50 50 50

0 0 0 0
0 50 100 150 200 250 300 0 50 100 150 200 250 300 0 50 100 150 200 250 300 0 50 100 150 200 250 300
Pixel value on location(x,y) Pixel value on location(x,y) Pixel value on location(x,y) Pixel value on location(x,y)

(a) (b) (c) (d)

Pixel value on location(x+1,y+1)

Pixel value on location(x-1,y+1)

Pixel value on location(x+1,y)

Pixel value on location(x,y+1)

300 300 300 300

250 250 250 250

200 200 200 200

150 150 150 150

100 100 100 100

50 50 50 50

0 0 0 0
0 50 100 150 200 250 300 0 50 100 150 200 250 300 0 50 100 150 200 250 300 0 50 100 150 200 250 300
Pixel value on location(x,y) Pixel value on location(x,y) Pixel value on location(x,y) Pixel value on location(x,y)

(e) (f) (g) (h)

Figure 6. Correlation coefficients distribution map of plain image and cipher image of “7.1.02.tiff”: (a) “7.1.02.tiff” plain
image horizontal correlation; (b) “7.1.02.tiff” plain image is vertical correlation; (c) “7.1.02.tiff” plain image diagonal
correlation; (d) “7.1.02.tiff” plain image against angular direction correlation; (e) “7.1.02.tiff” cipher image horizontal
correlation; (f) “7.1.02.tiff” cipher image vertical correlation; (g) “7.1.02.tiff” cipher image diagonal correlation; (h) “7.1.02.tiff”
cipher image inverse diagonal correlation.

600
Frequency

400

200

0
0 50 100 150 200 250
Pixel gray value
(a) (b) (c) (d)

600
Frequency

400

200

0
0 50 100 150 200 250
Pixel gray value
(e) (f) (g) (h)

Figure 7. The key sensitivity test: (a) x1 (0), x2 (0), x3 (0), x4 (0); (b) x1 (0) + 10−15 , x2 (0), x3 (0), x4 (0); (c) Difference image
after key perturbation; (d) Difference histogram after key perturbation; (e) x1 (0), x2 (0), x3 (0), x4 (0); (f) x1 (0), x2 (0) +
10−15 , x3 (0), x4 (0); (g) Difference image after key perturbation; (h) Difference histogram after key perturbation.
Entropy 2021, 23, 1000 11 of 17

2 x (0)=0.2 x (0)=0.2 x (0)=0.2 x (0)=0.2

1 2 3 4
2 x1(0)=0.2 x2(0)=0.2 x3(0)=0.2 x4(0)=0.2
x1(0)=0.2001 x2(0)=0.2 x3(0)=0.2 x4(0)=0.2 x1(0)=0.2001 x2(0)=0.2 x3(0)=0.2 x4(0)=0.2

2
0
x1

x
-2 -2
1 1.2 1.4 1.6 1.8 2 1 1.2 1.4 1.6 1.8 2
t 4 t 4
#10 #10
(a) (b)

10 5
x (0)=0.2 x (0)=0.2 x (0)=0.2 x (0)=0.2 x (0)=0.2 x (0)=0.2 x (0)=0.2 x (0)=0.2
1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4
x (0)=0.2001 x (0)=0.2 x (0)=0.2 x (0)=0.2 x (0)=0.2001 x (0)=0.2 x (0)=0.2 x (0)=0.2
1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4
3

4
0 0
x

x
-10 -5
1 1.2 1.4 1.6 1 1.2 1.4 1.6 1.8 2
4
t #104 t #10
(c) (d)

Figure 8. Comparison of four sequences (a–d) before and after key x1 (0) perturbation.

Plaintext sensitivity is also one of the important indexes of encryption system security,
which indicates the ability of encryption system to resist the differential attack. A secure
encryption system should be highly sensitive to plain image. The Number of Pixels Change
Rate (NPCR) and Unified Average Changing Intensity (UACI) can be used to represent the
difference between two plain images with one pixel difference. The calculation formula
is [56]:

H W
 NPCR = 1 × ∑ ∑ D (i, j) × 100%


 H ×W
i =1 j =1
H W v (i,j)−v (i,j)|
(13)
1 | 1
U ACI = × ∑ ∑ 2
× 100%


H ×W 255


i =1 j =1
(
0, v1 (i, j) = v2 (i, j)
where D (i, j) = . v1 (i, j) and v2 (i, j) denote the pixel values at posi-
1, v1 (i, j) 6= v2 (i, j)
tions v1 and v2 . For a digital image with a gray level of 256, 99.6094% and 33.4635% are
ideal values of the NPCR and UACI, respectively.
Firstly, select a pixel from the “Lena” gray image randomly so that we can obtain a
new image by changing its pixel value. Then, the two gray images which differ by only
one pixel are each encrypted to obtain two ciphertext images. Finally, the NPCR and UACI
values of the two encrypted images are obtained and the above operations will be repeated
50 times to obtain 50 groups of NPCR and UACI values. The NPCR and UACI average
values of the gray images are shown in Table 3.
 Entropy 2021, 23, 1000 12 of 17

Table 3. NPCR and UACI.

Pictures NPCR (99.6094%) UACI (33.4635%)

1.2.04.tiff 99.6093% 33.5974%

1.2.07.tiff 99.6078% 33.5580%
1.2.08.tiff 99.6154% 33.5209%
5.1.11.tiff 99.5544% 33.4018%

The NPCR and UACI values obtained each time are shown in Figure 9. The NPCR
and UACI average values are very close to the theoretical value. Therefore, the encryption
system designed in this paper is extremely sensitive to both plain images and keys. The en-
cryption algorithm designed in this study is safer and can resist the differential attack.

100 34.5
NPCR UACI
99.8 34
NPCR

UACI

99.6 33.5

99.4 33
0 10 20 30 40 50 0 10 20 30 40 50
times times
(a) (b)

Figure 9. NPCR (a) and UACI (b).

4.6. Information Entropy Analysis

The degree of the randomness of the system can be expressed by information entropy.
The information entropy of the image is positively correlated with the encryption effect.
The larger the information entropy is, the better effect the encryption will have. The formula
of information entropy is defined as [57]:

G −1
H (n) = − ∑ −1P(ni )log2 P(ni ) (14)
i =0

where G represents the number of gray level values of the image and P(ni ) the frequency
of pixels with gray value i. The range of gray value of an image with a gray level of 256 is
[0, 255], and 8 is its ideal information entropy. When the value of information entropy is
closer to 8, the image encryption has better effect [58].
Table 4 shows the information entropy before and after image encryption. The infor-
mation entropy of the cipher image is very close to the theoretical value of information
entropy. It is proven that the pixel value distribution of the cipher image is highly ran-
dom and the encryption effect is better. Therefore, the algorithm can effectively resist the
information entropy attack [33].
Entropy 2021, 23, 1000 13 of 17

Table 4. Information entropy of the plain image and cipher image.

Pictures Plain Image Cipher Image

7.1.02.tiff 4.0045 7.9993

5.1.11.tiff 6.4523 7.9970
5.1.12.tiff 6.7057 7.9972
5.2.10.tiff 5.7056 7.9992

4.7. Psnr and Ssim

Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratio (PSNR) and Structural SIMilarity (SSIM) are often used to
reflect the encryption quality. PSNR is essentially the same as the Mean Square Error (MSE)
and can be obtained by MSE. The calculation formula is [59]:

H W

1 2
 MSE =
 ∑ ∑ ( P(i, j) − C (i, j))
H ×W
i =1 j =1
 2  (15)

 PSNR = 10 × log Q
10 MSE

where the height and width of the image are represented by H and W, respectively, the pixel
level of the image is represented by Q, the plain image pixels are represented by P(i, j),
and the cipher image pixels are represented by C (i, j). SSIM is defined as [59]:
  
2µ p µc +(0.01L)2 2σpc +(0.03L)2
SSI M ( p, c) =    (16)
u2p + u2c +(0.01L)2 σp2 + σc2 +(0.03L)2

where the average values of the plain image P and the cipher image C are denoted by u p
and uc , respectively. The variance of the plain image and the cipher image denoted by σp2
and σc2 indicates that the covariance of the plain image and the cipher image represented by
σpc . (0.01L)2 and (0.03L)2 are used as constant numbers to maintain stability. L represents
the dynamic range of pixel values.
The range of SSIM is from −1 to 1. When the two images are the same, SSIM is 1.
The smaller the PSNR and SSIM are, the better the encryption quality is. Tables 5 and 6
show the encryption quality of the proposed scheme and the classic encryption schemes in
recent years.

Table 5. PSNR of cipher image with different algorithms.

Pictures This Paper Ref. [1] Ref. [60] Ref. [28]

7.1.02.tiff 8.9518 9.1033 8.9731 8.9801

5.2.10.tiff 8.7620 8.7684 8.7660 8.7621
5.1.13.tiff 4.9032 4.9585 4.9168 4.9141
5.2.08.tiff 9.6225 9.6389 9.6378 9.6198
Entropy 2021, 23, 1000 14 of 17

Table 6. SSIM of cipher image based on different algorithms.

Pictures This Paper Ref. [1] Ref. [60] Ref. [28]

7.1.02.tiff 0.0102 0.0108 0.0103 0.0109

5.1.11.tiff 0.0101 0.0099 0.0101 0.0109
5.2.10.tiff 0.0087 0.0098 0.0100 0.0091
5.1.13.tiff 0.0037 0.0057 0.0085 0.0067

The experimental results show that the PSNR and SSIM values obtained by the
proposed algorithm are lower than those of other proposed approaches. Therefore, this
encryption scheme has certain advantages, and the image encryption quality is high.

4.8. Robust Noise Analysis

Robustness means that the system still has certain performance under interference
or at random. Image robustness refers to the fact that the image still has a certain degree
of fidelity after undergoing various signal processing or attacks. The image can still be
recognized, with low distortion. Add 20% salt-and-pepper noise and 80 × 80 occlusion
noise to the cipher image “Figure 5a”. The experimental results are shown in the figure
below [34,60,61].
It can be seen from Figure 10 that the decrypted images can still be easily identified
with high fidelity after noise is added to the cipher image, which indicates the robustness
of the image encryption system that can resist noise attacks.

(a) (b)

(c) (d)

Figure 10. (a) Salt-and-pepper noise cipher image; (b) Occlusion noise cipher image; (c) Decryption
of cipher image with salt-and-pepper noise; (d) Decryption of cipher image with occlusion noise.

5. Conclusions
This paper proposes a security-enhanced image communication scheme based on
CNN under the cryptanalysis. First, the complex characteristics of CNN are used to
generate some sequences. Then, a plain image and these CNN-based sequences are
Entropy 2021, 23, 1000 15 of 17

confused, permuted and diffused to get the cipher image. Utilizing the complex dynamics
of CNN can effectively enhance the confusion, diffusion and avalanche of encryption.
Theoretical analysis and experimental results both demonstrate its safety performance.
From the perspective of cryptanalysis, the structure of an image cipher can effectively resist
various common attacks. Therefore, the image communication scheme based on CNN
proposed in this paper is a competitive security technology method.

Author Contributions: Methodology, H.W.; Project administration, H.W. and C.Z.; Software, J.X.,
R.C. and D.S.; Supervision, C.Z.; Validation, J.X., Y.L. (Yunlong Liao), R.C., L.W., Y.S., Q.L., Z.L., S.Z.,
Y.L. (Yuxuan Liu), A.H., T.L., C.C. and J.W.; Writing—original draft, J.X.; Writing—review & editing,
H.W. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.
Funding: This work was supported in part by the National Science Foundation of China under
Grant 62071088 and Grant 61571092; in part by the Project for Innovation Team of Guangdong
University under Grant 2018KCXTD033; in part by the Project for Zhongshan Social Public Welfare
Science and Technology under Grant 2019B2007; in part by the Science and Technology Projects of
Guangdong Province under Grant 2021A0101180005; in part by the Research Project for Talent of
UESTC Zhongshan Institute under Grant 418YKQN07 and Grant 419YKQN23; and in part by the
Opening Project Guangdong Province Key Laboratory of Information Security Technology under
Grant 2020B1212060078.
Data Availability Statement: Not applicable.
Conflicts of Interest: The authors declare no conflict of interest.

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