Secured Digital Image Sharing by Using NVSS

Conventional visual secret sharing schemes hide secret images in the form of shares that are printed on transparencies and stored in a digital form. The generated shares appear as noise-like pixels, but it will stimulate suspicion and increase the interception risk during transmission of the generated shares. Hence, visual secret sharing schemes experience from a transmission risk problem for both the secret data image and for the participants who are involved in the sharing process. To tackle this transmission risk problem, we proposed a natural-image-based visual secret sharing scheme (NVSS scheme) which can share the secret data images via various transporter media to protect the secret data image and the participants during the transmission process. The proposed NVSS scheme can share a digital secret data image over n - 1 randomly selected natural images (natural shares) and one noise-like share. The natural images can be of different types such as camera photos or hand-painted pictures in digital or in printed form. The noise-like share is generated based on these natural shares and the secret data image. The unchanged natural shares are diverse and harmless, thus greatly reducing the transmission risk problem. Experimental results will indicate that the proposed scheme is an admirable way out for solving the transmission risk difficulty for the visual secret sharing schemes.