Visual Secret Sharing Technique for Meaningful Shares using Boolean Operation

Abstract

Visual secret sharing (VSS) scheme generates shares by encoding secret image into meaningless images. Human visual system is utilized to reveal secret image by share superimposition. XOR-based VSS scheme excels the visual performance of image and resolves the pixel alignment issue. Recently, the concept of meaningful shares is developed to share secret image to reduce the suspicion. However, a trade-off amongst share image quality and recovered secret image exist. This study presents VSS technique for meaningful shares using Boolean operation. Meaningful shares are generated by embedding different number of bits from secret and cover images. Likewise, lossless secret image is reconstructed using these meaningful shares while decoding. The combination of bits provide different visual quality of shares. Hence, in this paper, distinct bit combination is studied and optimum combination is reported.