Securing the contents of document images using knight moves and genetic approach

In this paper, a novel approach is proposed to secure the contents of document images. In the proposed approach, input document image is simulated as chessboard. Encryption process is based on moves of knight pawn used in chess board and cross over operation of genetic algorithm. The proposed approach comprises two stages. In first stage, a number of knight pawns with initial positions are selected. Legal movement of knight pawns for a specific number of times is performed. Knight pawns acquire new positions after each move. Crossover operation is applied on randomly selected two positions of knight pawns in second stage to generate the encrypted image. Exhaustive experiments are carried out by varying the number of knight pawns and number of moves of knight pawns. The performance evaluation of the approach is measured in terms of the parameters entropy and Peak Signal to Noise Ratio. The proposed approach is compared with the encryption method in [12]. The comparative analysis reveals that the proposed algorithm enhances the security of the information contents in input document images.