Scalable secret image sharing

In this paper, we propose an innovative scheme, namely the scalable secret image sharing scheme, for sharing an image O among n participants such that the clarity of the reconstructed image (i.e., the amount of information therein) scales with proportion with the number of the participants. The proposed scheme encodes O into n shadow images that exhibit the following features: (a) each shadow image reveals no information about O, (b) each shadow image is only half the size of O, (c) any k (2⩽k⩽n) shadow images can be used to reconstruct O in a scalable manner such that the amount of information about O is proportional to k, and (d) O can be reconstructed perfectly when all of the n shadow images are available. The clarity of O can be measured in terms of several metrics. We define three modes, namely the multisecret, priority, and progressive modes, for sharing O in our scheme. The scalability and flexibility of the proposed schemes indicate the wide range of potential applications for secret image sharing.