A Secure and Efficient Scalable Secret Image Sharing Scheme with Flexible Shadow Sizes

PLoS One. 2017 Jan 10;12(1):e0168674. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0168674. eCollection 2017.

Abstract

In a general (k, n) scalable secret image sharing (SSIS) scheme, the secret image is shared by n participants and any k or more than k participants have the ability to reconstruct it. The scalability means that the amount of information in the reconstructed image scales in proportion to the number of the participants. In most existing SSIS schemes, the size of each image shadow is relatively large and the dealer does not has a flexible control strategy to adjust it to meet the demand of differen applications. Besides, almost all existing SSIS schemes are not applicable under noise circumstances. To address these deficiencies, in this paper we present a novel SSIS scheme based on a brand-new technique, called compressed sensing, which has been widely used in many fields such as image processing, wireless communication and medical imaging. Our scheme has the property of flexibility, which means that the dealer can achieve a compromise between the size of each shadow and the quality of the reconstructed image. In addition, our scheme has many other advantages, including smooth scalability, noise-resilient capability, and high security. The experimental results and the comparison with similar works demonstrate the feasibility and superiority of our scheme.

MeSH terms

  • Algorithms
  • Computer Security*
  • Humans
  • Image Processing, Computer-Assisted*
  • Information Dissemination*
  • Models, Theoretical*

Grants and funding

This paper is supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (Grant no. 2016YFB0800602), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant nos. 61472045 and 61573067), the Beijing City Board of Education Science and Technology Key Project (Grant nos. KZ201510015015 and KM201510015009).