A color image secret sharing scheme satisfying the perfect reconstruction property

A new scheme suitable for simultaneous encryption and secret sharing of color images is presented. Employing a generalized {k,n}-secret sharing principle the method encrypts the color image input into n noise-like color shares. The secret information is recovered only if k allowed shares are available for decryption. To overcome limitations of traditional secret sharing schemes, the method i) operates at the bit-levels of the input and share images, ii) increases the level of protection utilizing full color gamut in generating the shares, and iii) satisfies the perfect reconstruction property, in terms of both the spatial resolution and the color/structural image content, for an authorized decryption process.