Title: Designing secure image retrieval with SKDTree and security protocols

Authors: Dawei Yin; Lihong Zhang; Kai Yan

Addresses: General Affairs Office, Laiwu Vocational and Technical College, Ji'nan, 271100, China ' Department of Artificial Intelligence, Laiwu Vocational and Technical College, Ji'nan, 271100, China ' Department of Artificial Intelligence, Laiwu Vocational and Technical College, Ji'nan, 271100, China

Abstract: With the rise of cloud computing, traditional image retrieval techniques struggle to handle the explosive growth of image data. This study proposes a secure image retrieval method based on the secure KD-tree, integrating scale invariant feature transform for feature extraction and secure interaction protocols for encryption. Experimental results show that the improved SKDTree algorithm achieves a retrieval time of 48 ms for file 1, outperforming the spectral encoding-based subgraph indexing (62 ms) and graph isomorphism (59 ms) algorithms. Additionally, processing 40 images takes 48.63 s, significantly faster than the 68.36 s required by the spectral encoding-based approach. These findings demonstrate that the proposed method ensures efficient and accurate image retrieval. The study contributes to secure multi-server collaboration, enhancing retrieval performance in large-scale cloud environments.

Keywords: secure KD-tree; SKDTree; secure interaction protocol; image retrieval; access control strategy; scale invariant feature transform.

DOI: 10.1504/IJICS.2026.150534

International Journal of Information and Computer Security, 2026 Vol.29 No.1, pp.1 - 19

Received: 20 Mar 2025
Accepted: 30 Jul 2025
Published online: 16 Dec 2025 *

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