Optical encryption based on computational ghost imaging

Ghost imaging is an optical technique in which the information of an object is encoded in the correlation of the intensity fluctuations of light. The computational version of this fascinating phenomenon emulates, offline, the optical propagation through the reference arm, enabling 3D visualization of a complex object whose transmitted light is measured by a bucket detector. In this Letter, we show how computational ghost imaging can be used to encrypt and transmit object information to a remote party. Important features, such as key compressibility and vulnerability to eavesdropping, are experimentally analyzed.