Multilevel image authentication using row scanning compressive ghost imaging and hyperplane secret sharing algorithm

A multilevel image authentication method is proposed which is based on row scanning compressive ghost imaging and a hyperplane secret sharing algorithm. In the image encoding process, after the wavelet transform and Arnold transform for the certification image, through row scanning compressive ghost imaging, the ciphertext matrix can be first detected by a bucket detector (BD). Based on a hyperplane secret sharing algorithm, the measurement key using in the row scanning compressive ghost imaging, can be decomposed and shared into n subkeys, which are then distributed to n different participants. In the high-level authentication process, based on a hyperplane secret sharing algorithm and a compressive reconstruction algorithm, any t or more participants with the corresponding correct subkeys can be gathered to reconstruct the original meaningful certification image with high correlation coefficient (CC); While in the case of low-level authentication process, only one authenticator who possesses a correct subkey will gain no significant information of certification image, however, it can result in a remarkable peak output in the nonlinear correlation coefficient distribution. Theoretical analysis and numerical simulations both verify the feasibility of the proposed method.