A novel (n,t, n) secret image sharing scheme without a trusted third party

Secret image sharing is a technique to share a secret image among a set of n participants. A trusted third party embeds the secret image into the cover image to generate shadow images such that at least t or more shadow images can reconstruct the secret image. In this paper, we consider an extreme and real-world situation, in which there is no one who is trusted by anyone else. In the proposed scheme, the participants can act as a dealer and communicate with each other in a secret channel. Each participant can generate her/his own shadow image independently, according to the cover image and the secret image. Experimental results are provided to show that the shadow images have satisfactory quality. In addition, our scheme has a large embedding capacity, and the secret image can be reconstructed losslessly.