Enhancing Grayscale and Color Image Security: A Hybrid Encryption Method Utilizing 3D Henon Map and 3D Arnold Cat Map

Nowadays, a wide range of media, including pictures, are used to communicate vast volumes of information. Novel approach must employ cryptographic methods like encryption to guarantee data security and ownership. To improve data security, novel developed chaotic map method for image encryption by combining two chaotic map algorithms, which presented in this work. The two different approaches are the 3D Henon map and the 3D Arnold's Cat map. Both the encryption and decryption processes use them in tandem. Using a 3D Henon map first, then a 3D Arnold Cat map, the final encrypted picture for transmission in this work is produced. After the encrypted picture is created, it goes through a reverse process that first uses 3D Arnold's Cat to decode it, follow by 3D Henon map to recover the resulting image. This proposed solution has a high entropy value, and provides users with extra performance requirements for security and unpredictability. For every small change in pixels, the unified average changing intensity (UACI) and number of pixels change rate (NPCR) are employed to verify the efficacy of image encryption algorithms. © 2026 Institute of Electrical Engineers of Japan. Published by Wiley Periodicals LLC.