The quantum realization of Arnold and Fibonacci image scrambling.

The quantum Fourier transform, the quantum wavelet transform, etc., have been shown to be a powerful tool in developing quantum algorithms. However, in classical computing, there is another kind of transforms, image scrambling, which are as useful as Fourier transform, wavelet transform, etc. The main aim of image scrambling, which is generally used as the preprocessing or postprocessing in the confidentiality storage and transmission, and image information hiding, was to transform a meaningful image into a meaningless or disordered image in order to enhance the image security. In classical image processing, Arnold and Fibonacci image scrambling are often used. In order to realize these two image scrambling in quantum computers, this paper proposes the scrambling quantum circuits based on the flexible representation for quantum images. The circuits take advantage of the plain adder and adder modulo $$N$$ to factor the classical transformations into basic unitary operators such as Control-NOT gates and Toffoli gates. Theoretical analysis indicates that the network complexity grows linearly with the size of the number to be operated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]