Comparative analysis of filters in halftone visual cryptography via error diffusion

Guided by :- Er. Sunil Agrawal Assistant professor UIET(P.U.)

Presented by Anshul Sharma 10552

Content
Introduction Background Visual cryptography Halftone visual cryptography Error diffusion Literature survey Gap analysis Problem statement Objectives Work done Work to be done Queries and suggestions

Introduction
Secure digital imaging is an important research area combining methods and techniques coming from cryptography and image processing. Visual cryptography and in general secret image sharing techniques enable distributing sensitive visual materials to involved participants through public communication channels, as the generated secure images do not reveal any information if they are not combined in the prescribed way. In visual cryptography, the decoding process is performed directly by the human eyes, while in general, the shared images need some processing to reconstruct the secret image. Secure image sharing techniques overcome the traditional cryptographic approach, providing new solutions for the development of new and secure imaging applications.

Visual cryptography
Proposed by Naor and Shamir. in a k-out-of-n visual secret sharing scheme (VSS), a secret image is cryptographically encoded into n shares. Each share resembles a random binary pattern. secret images can be visually revealed by stacking together any k or more transparencies of the shares. If less than k shares; no information about image can be gained VSS in multiparty variant of steganography.

Halftone visual cryptography

VC is mathematically secure, however, it produces random patterns which have no visual meaning, raising the suspicion of data encryption. the halftoning framework of VC, a secret binary image is encrypted into high quality halftone images, or halftone shares. It is based upon the basis matrices collections available in conventional visual cryptography. A secret binary pixel p is encoded into an array of q=v1*v2 called a halftone cell, in each of the n shares. Error diffusion algorithm is used to achieve improved halftone image quality in each share.

Error diffusion
Error diffusion is a simple, yet efficient algorithm to halftone a grayscale image compared with other halftoning algorithms. The quantization error at each pixel is filtered and fed-back to a set of future input pixels. Error diffusion consists of two main components out of which the first component is the threshold block t(m,n) and another is the error filter h(k,l) . 1, if d (m, n) t (m, n) g (m,n)= 0, otherwise

Literature survey
M. Naor and A. Shamir. Visual cryptography. Advances in Cryptography: EUROCRYPT'94, LNCS, 950:1-12, 1995. Z.Wang and G. R. Arce. Halftone visual cryptography via error diffusion. IEEE Trans. Inf. Forensics Security, 4(3):383-396, Sep. 2009. G. Ateniese, C. Blundo, A. De Santis, and D. R. Stinson, Visual cryptography for general access structures, Inf. Comput., vol. 129, no. 2, pp. 86 106, Sep. 1996 C. C. Lin and W. H. Tsai, Visual cryptography for gray-level images by dithering techniques, Pattern Recognit. Lett., vol. 24, pp. 349 358, Jan. 2003. Z. Zhou, G. R. Arce, and G. Di Crescenzo, Halftone visual cryptography, in Proc. IEEE Int. Conf. Image Process., Barcelona, Spain, Sep. 2003. Nitty Sarah Alex and L. Jani Anbarasi Enhanced Image Secret Sharing via Error Diffusion in Halftone Visual Cryptography 2011 ,IEEE

Gap analysis
From different HVC methods it was concluded:
S is the quality index of halftone images and large S means good halftone image quality . But it also introduces higher contrast loss in reconstructed images .

From previous work in halftone error diffusion for computer graphics it was concluded
that error filter employed in error diffusion also affects the image quality of the shares. Like error filters with longer weights lead to sharper contrast in halftone image . In HVC via error diffusion the effect of only Jarvis and Floyd's Steinberg filters have been considered. But in computer graphics there are also other variants of these filters that are used whose affect have not been studied until now.

Problem statement
The aim is to apply the filters which are traditionally being used in halftone error diffusion for computer graphics in halftone visual cryptography via error diffusion and trying to find out the improvement in visual pleasing effect.

Objectives
Apply Stucki, Burges, sierra and Atkinson s filters in error diffusion of halftone shares. Study the improvement in visual pleasing effect of the images. Comparative analysis based on contrast and PSNR with the generally used filters (FloydSteinberg and Jarvis filter) in halftone visual cryptography via error diffusion.

Work done
Filters to be applied on halftone visual cryptography via error diffusion have been finalized (Sierra, Stucki, burges, Atkinson s filters) traditional filters have been implemented. Parameters for comparative analysis have been decided 1. ( ):-called the relative difference referred to as the contrast of the decoded image. 2. PSNR: - it computes the peak signal to noise ratio b/w two images. Images to be worked on have been acquired (open source binary and grayscale images). Methodology to be applied has been decided.

Work to be done
Matlab codes for different filters are to be written and applied on images for results. Comparative analysis based on the decided parameters is to be made between the images obtained by new filters and existing and generally used filters.

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