# Can I use imaginary part of plaintext in CKKS?

**URL:** <https://openfhe.discourse.group/t/can-i-use-imaginary-part-of-plaintext-in-ckks/873>\
**Category:** FHE Questions\
**Created:** [November 3, 2023, 9:56am UTC](https://openfhe.discourse.group/t/can-i-use-imaginary-part-of-plaintext-in-ckks/873 "2023-11-03T09:56:52Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 6

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**Author:** ![andreea.alexandru](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex031/user_avatar/openfhe.discourse.group/andreea.alexandru/32/378_2.png) [@andreea.alexandru](https://openfhe.discourse.group/u/andreea.alexandru)\
**Post date:** [July 11, 2024, 10:31am UTC](https://openfhe.discourse.group/t/can-i-use-imaginary-part-of-plaintext-in-ckks/873/6 "2024-07-11T10:31:04Z")

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Currently the CKKS implementation in OpenFHE only works with real inputs, because it was modified to use the imaginary part for error estimation. If you need to work with imaginary numbers, you can try to manually modify the CKKS encoding as in [here](https://github.com/openfheorg/openfhe-development/commit/d28098ea2158506497aa031868dfa49f9aa0b08c).

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