Sharing a verifiable secret image using two shadows

In this paper, we propose a novel (2,2)(2,2) verifiable secret sharing (VSS) scheme, which not only protects a secret image but also allows users to verify the restored secret image in the revealing and verifying phase, for all binary, grayscale and color images. Error diffusion and image clustering techniques are adopted to achieve our objective. Experimental results and discussions show that the proposed scheme, with its smaller shadow size and lower computational complexity, obviously outperforms previous VSS schemes designed either with or without the cheating prevention mechanism. Moreover, the use of a halftone logo gives an efficient solution to verifying whether the restored secret image is correct by using a halftone logo.