The main goal of this paper is to present an efficient method for secure 2D image visualisation and transmission through chaotic confusion and pixel diffusion methods. In recent years, the expeditious valuation of digital data exchange has become very important. The safety of any data exchange is imperative in the digital image data storage, retrieval process and communication procedure. The safety and security issues related to Internet banking and email systems necessitate text security in today’s digital media. In order to provide secure transmission and retrieval of image data, pixels in an image are scrambled and replaced within the image. The proposed system uses chaotic confusion and pixel diffusion techniques for securing input images. In the confusion method, the pixels within the image are substituted with other values and in the diffusion method, the pixels are re-substituted within the input image. The confusion method and the diffusion method use the selective technique for the generation of secret keys. Improve the quality of the proposed work is utilizing various image quality parameters and error metrics such as MSE, SNR, PSNR etc. The proposed system also utilises chaos maps for the encryption and decryption of the input image. © 2018 Universiti Putra Malaysia Press.