An efficient Boolean based multi-secret image sharing scheme

The purpose of this paper is to develop an algorithm for sharing k secret images to n participants in such a way that each participant gets a single share image by encoding all k images. Any qualified subgroup of t : t ≤ n of those n participants can reconstruct the k_ith secret image only by combining their share images if they are qualified to reconstruct the k_ith secret image. Most of the existing literature solves this problem for the cases where t =?2 or t = n making it a very restrictive scheme. In this article, we aim to design a multi-secret image sharing scheme based on XOR operation where t is not restricted to be 2 or n. We have used n random matrices of the same size as the secret image size as private share to generate r (where r is the number of qualified subgroups) share images as public share using XOR operations. The proposed scheme is computationally lightweight and lossless due to XOR operation only. It does not involve any pixel expansion. The experimental results with a very low correlation coefficient between share and secret images confirm that share image does not reveal anything about secret image. The scheme is secure against differential attack as a higher value of Number of Changing Pixel rate (NPCR) confirms that. The current proposal is based on a general access structure, and hence any secret image can be reconstructed by a qualified group of t or more shares where t need not be 2 or n only.