AccScience Publishing / NSCE / Online First / DOI: 10.36922/NSCE025390012
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RESEARCH ARTICLE

Lightweight image encryption via four-dimensional Hénon memristor map and fast block permutation

Yiting Lin1,2 ,  Yunlong Liao3 ,  Yunan Wei1,2 ,  Wenjun Zeng4 ,  Ugur Erkan5 ,  Abdurrahim Toktas5 ,  Yong Zhang6 ,  Donglong Chen1,2*
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1 Guangdong Provincial/Zhuhai Key Laboratory of Interdisciplinary Research and Application for Data Science, Beijing Normal-Hong Kong Baptist University, Zhuhai, Guangdong, China
2 Department of Computer Science, Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong, China
3 Faculty of Applied Sciences, Macao Polytechnic University, Macao SAR, China
4 The Key Lab of Optical Fiber Sensing and Communications (MOE), School of Information and Communication Engineering, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu, Sichuan, China
5 Department of Artificial Intelligence and Data Engineering, Engineering Faculty, Ankara University, Ankara, Turkey
6 School of Computing and Artificial Intelligence, Jiangxi University of Finance and Economics, Nanchang, Jiangxi, China
NSCE, 025390012 https://doi.org/10.36922/NSCE025390012
Received: 25 September 2025 | Revised: 14 October 2025 | Accepted: 20 October 2025 | Published online: 12 November 2025
© 2025 by the Author(s). This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution -Noncommercial 4.0 International License (CC-by the license) ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ )
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Abstract

With the rapid proliferation of multimedia data in the big data era, digital image security has become an urgent research concern. To address the trade-off between efficiency and robustness, this paper proposes a chaos-driven image encryption scheme based on a four-dimensional Henon memristor map (4D-HMM). First, the plaintext image is adaptively embedded into the secret key via SHA-256 perturbation, ensuring strong plaintext sensitivity. Then, pseudo-random sequences generated by the 4D-HMM are employed to drive a four-stage encryption framework consisting of fast block permutation, block rotation/flip, negative–positive, transformation, and color channel permutation. Finally, lightweight bitwise diffusion and convolution-based diffusion are successively applied to achieve pixel-level scrambling and global avalanche effects. Experimental results show that the proposed scheme achieves excellent security metrics, including uniform histograms, information entropy values close to the ideal, low pixel correlation, and a large key space. Moreover, differential attack resistance is validated by the number of pixels change rate and unified average changing intensity results approaching theoretical values, while avalanche tests confirm that a single-bit change in the plain text or key leads to significant, unpredictable variations in the ciphertext. The scheme thus provides both high efficiency and strong cryptographic security, making it suitable for real-time multimedia protection in modern communication environments.

Keywords
Multimedia security
Image encryption
Chaotic encryption
Henon hyperchaos system
Funding
None.
Conflict of interest
Abdurrahim Toktas is an Editorial Board Member of this journal, but was not in any way involved in the editorial and peer-review process conducted for this paper, directly or indirectly. Separately, other authors declared that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have influenced the work reported in this paper.
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