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In this work, we present a new nonlinear joint transform correlator (JTC) architecture in the Fourier domain (FD) for the encryption and decryption of two simultaneous images. The main features of the proposed system are its increased level of security, the obtention of a single real-valued encrypted signal that contains the ciphered information of the two primary images and, additionally, a high image quality for the two final decrypted signals. The two images to be encrypted can be either related to each other, or independent signals. The encryption system is based on the double random phase encoding (DRPE), which is implemented by using a nonlinear JTC in the FD. The input plane of the JTC has four non-overlapping data distributions placed side-by-side with no blank spaces between them. The four data distributions are phase-only functions defined by the two images to encrypt and four random phase masks (RPMs). The joint power spectrum (JPS) is produced by the intensity of the Fourier transform (FT) of the input plane of the JTC. One of the main novelties of the proposal consists of the determination of the appropriate two nonlinear operations that modify the JPS distribution with a twofold purpose: to obtain a single real-valued encrypted image with a high level of security and to improve the quality of the decrypted images. The security keys of the encryption system are represented by the four RPMs, which are all necessary for a satisfactory decryption. The decryption system is implemented using a 4f-processor where the encrypted image and the security keys given by the four RPMs are introduced in the proper plane of the processor. The double image encryption system based on a nonlinear JTC in the FD increases the security of the system because there is a larger key space, and we can simultaneously validate two independent information signals (original images to encrypt) in comparison to previous similar proposals. The feasibility and performance of the proposed double image encryption and decryption system based on a nonlinear JTC are validated through computational simulations. Finally, we additionally comment on the proposed security system resistance against different attacks based on brute force, plaintext and deep learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Retinal images are essential clinical resources for the diagnosis of retinopathy and many other ocular diseases. Because of improper acquisition conditions or inherent optical aberrations in the eye, the images are often degraded with blur. In many common cases, the blur varies across the field of view. Most image deblurring algorithms assume a space-invariant blur, which fails in the presence of space-variant (SV) blur. In this work, we propose an innovative strategy for the restoration of retinal images in which we consider the blur to be both unknown and SV. We model the blur by a linear operation interpreted as a convolution with a point-spread function (PSF) that changes with the position in the image. To achieve an artifact-free restoration, we propose a framework for a robust estimation of the SV PSF based on an eye-domain knowledge strategy. The restoration method was tested on artificially and naturally degraded retinal images. The results show an important enhancement, significant enough to leverage the images' clinical use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The integration of photon-counting imaging techniques and optical encryption systems can improve information authentication robustness against intruder attacks. Photon-counting imaging generates distributions with far fewer photons than conventional imaging and provides substantial bandwidth reduction by generating sparse encrypted data. We show that photon-limited encrypted distributions have sufficient information for successful decryption, authentication and signal retrieval. Additional compression of the encrypted distribution is applied by limiting the number of phase values used to reproduce the phase information of the complex-valued encrypted data. The validity of this technique--with and without phase compression--is probed through simulated experiments for two types of input images: alphanumerical signs and dithered natural scenes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We propose a new encryption system based on a nonlinear joint transform correlator (JTC) using the information of two biometrics (one digital fingerprint for each user) as security keys of the encryption system. In order to perform the decryption and authentication in a proper way, it is necessary to have the two digital fingerprints from the respective users whose simultaneous authentication is pursued. The proposed security system is developed in the Fourier domain. The nonlinearity of the JTC along with the five security keys given by the three random phase masks and the two digital fingerprints of the two users allow an increase of the system security against brute force and plaintext attacks. The feasibility and validity of this proposal is demonstrated using digital fingerprints as biometrics in numerical experiments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]