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Abstract: A novel and robust chaos-based pseudorandom permutation–substitution scheme for image encryption is proposed. It is a loss-less symmetric block cipher and specifically designed for the color images but may also be used for the gray scale images. A secret key of 161-bit, comprising of the initial conditions and system parameter of the chaotic map (the standard map), number of iterations and number of rounds, is used in the algorithm. The whole encryption process is the sequential execution of a preliminary permutation and a fix number of rounds (as specified in the secret key) of substitution and main permutation of the 2D matrix obtained from the 3D image matrix. To increase the speed of encryption all three processes: preliminary permutation, substitution and main permutation are done row-by-row and column-by-column instead of pixel-by-pixel. All the permutation processes are made dependent on the input image matrix and controlled through the pseudo random number sequences (PRNS) generated from the discretization of chaotic standard map which result in both key sensitivity and plaintext sensitivity. However each substitution process is initiated with the initial vectors (different for rows and columns) generated using the secret key and chaotic standard map and then the properties of rows and column pixels of input matrix are mixed with the PRNS generated from the standard map. The security and performance analysis of the proposed image encryption has been performed using the histograms, correlation coefficients, information entropy, key sensitivity analysis, differential analysis, key space analysis, encryption/decryption rate analysis etc. Results suggest that the proposed image encryption technique is robust and secure and can be used for the secure image and video communication applications. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]