Essential secret image sharing scheme with different importance

of shadows
Peng Li
a,
, Ching-Nung Yang
b
, Chih-Cheng Wu
b
, Qian Kong
a
, Yanpeng Ma
a
a
Department of Mathematics and Physics, North China Electric Power University, Baoding 071003 Hebei, China
b
Department of CSIE, National Dong Hwa University, Taiwan
a r t i c l e i n f o
Article history:
Received 29 September 2012
Accepted 4 July 2013
Available online 16 July 2013
Keywords:
Secret sharing
Secret image sharing
Essential shadow image
Lagranges interpolation
Information hiding
Visual cryptography
Visual secret sharing
Image processing
a b s t r a c t
In (k, n) secret image sharing (SIS), a scheme encrypts a secret image into n shadow images. Any k or more
shadow images can be collaborated together to reveal the secret image. Most of the previous SIS schemes
dont distinguish the importance of shadows. However, in some application environments, some partic-
ipants are accorded special privileges due to their status or importance. Thus, some shadows may be
more important than others. In this paper, we consider the (t, s, k, n) essential SIS (ESIS) scheme. All n
shadows are classied into s essential shadows and (ns) non-essential shadows. When reconstructing
the secret image, the (t, s, k, n)-ESIS scheme needs k shadows, which should include at least t essential
shadows.
2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction
With the proliferation of image contents, the issues of secure
digital imaging have attracted a growing number of researchers
in the multimedia community. Secret image sharing techniques
distribute visual materials to involved participants, as the gener-
ated image does not reveal any information if they are not
combined in the prescribed way. Only qualied subsets of partici-
pants can cooperate to reveal the secret image, and forbidden sub-
set of participants can get no information of the secret. All qualied
subsets and forbidden subsets consist of the access structure of se-
cret image sharing scheme. In a (k, n) threshold secret image shar-
ing (SIS) scheme, where k 6 n, a secret image is shared into n
shadow images (referred to as shadows) in such a way that any k
shadows can be used to reconstruct the secret image exactly, but
use of any number of shadows less than k will not provide any
information about the secret image.
In 1979, Shamir [1] rst proposed a (k, n)-threshold secret sharing
schemebyhidingthesecret value intotheconstant coefcient of a ran-
dom(k 1)-degree polynomial. Based on Shamirs scheme, Thien and
Lin[2] usedall coefcients of the polynomial for embeddingsecret pix-
els, and reduced shadowsize 1/k times to the secret image. The secret
image can be perfectly reconstructed using Lagranges interpolation.
Since noise-like shadowimages are suspected, it is desirable to design
a (k, n)-SIS scheme using steganography so that shadows are meaning-
ful [37]. These (k, n)-SIS schemes have the steganography property
(i.e., the meaningful shadows that look like cover images) and the
authentication ability (one can verify the correctness of shadows).
There is also a novel scalable SIS (SSIS) scheme. In SSIS scheme [8
10], the information amount of reconstructed image is proportional
tothe number of shadows engagedindecryption. By properly combin-
ing a so-called visual cryptography scheme (VCS) and SIS scheme, the
authors proposed two-in-one SIS schemes [1113] to take advantage
of the relative strength of each scheme. Since all above scheme use
polynomial to generate shadows, these schemes can be called as poly-
nomial-based SIS (PSIS) scheme. For more details of the SIS schemes,
one can refer to [14]. In addition, a (2, n) matrix-based SIS (MSIS)
scheme was proposed in [15,16]. Similarly to the polynomial-based
SIS scheme, the matrix-based SIS scheme can recover the secret im-
age without any distortion. Moreover, it only requires simple bit
operations rather than complicated interpolating computation.
Most of the existing SIS schemes consider each participant plays
the same role in the revealing process. However, there are many
examples that some participants are accorded special privileges
due to their status or importance, e.g., heads of government, man-
agers of company, . . . , etc. So, we have to give special treatments to
some persons for some reasons. Weighted SIS (WSIS) scheme can
generate shadows with different weights according to participants
importance. The secret image is recovered if and only if the total
weight of the received shadows is at least t, where t is the thresh-
old. Chen et al. [17] proposed a so-called group-based weighting
1047-3203/$ - see front matter 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jvcir.2013.07.005

Corresponding author. Tel.: +86 0312 7525062; fax: +86 0312 7525073.
E-mail address: lphit@163.com (P. Li).
J. Vis. Commun. Image R. 24 (2013) 11061114
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
J. Vis. Commun. Image R.
j our nal homepage: www. el sevi er. com/ l ocat e/ j vci
SIS scheme to assign different weights to shadows. Although shad-
ows in different groups may have different weights, a shadow with
larger weight cannot replace a shadow with smaller weight in
revealing. Hence their scheme cannot be considered as a WSIS
scheme. Shyu et al. [18] proposed a WSIS scheme based upon Chi-
nese Remainder Theorem, which generate shadows with different
sizes. However, the revealing condition is still the number of shad-
ows, rather than the total weight of shadows. Lin et al. [19] pro-
posed the rst functional WSIS scheme to generate shadows with
different sizes according to their weights. The secret image is
recovered if and only if the total weight of the received shadows
is no less than threshold value. WSIS scheme can solve the problem
of participants with different status in some sense. However, in
practical, it is difcult to determine the weights of participants
according to their status.
In order to deal with participants with different importance, we
divide all participants into two groups: the essential group with
higher importance and the non-essential group with lower impor-
tance. In revealing process, it should not only satisfy the threshold
for all participants involved, but also satisfy the threshold for
essential participants involved. Compared with WSIS scheme, this
method is simple and effective. In this paper, we propose a novel (t,
s, k, n) essential SIS (ESIS) scheme. All n shadows are classied into
s essential shadows and ns non-essential shadows. Same as the
conventional (k, n)-SIS scheme, (t, s, k, n)-ESIS scheme needs k
shadows, which should include at least t essential shadows, for
reconstruction. The following sections are organized as follows.
In Section 2, we review existing (k, n)-SIS scheme and (k, n)-SSIS
scheme. Motivation and our (k, n)-ESIS schemes are introduced
in Section 3. Experiment and comparison are given in Sections 4
and 5 is the conclusion.
2. Preliminaries
2.1. The (k, n)-SIS Scheme
In 1979, Shamir [1] introduced the (k, n)-threshold secret shar-
ing to share a secret to n shares by a (k 1)-degree polynomial
f x a
0
a
1
x . . . a
k1
x
k1
mod p, in which p is a prime num-
ber and a
0
is the secret value. The n shares (i, f(i)), i = 1, 2, . . . , n, are
delivered to n participants. In reconstruction, any k shares (say
1, 2, . . . , k) can be used to recover the polynomial f(x) by Lagranges
interpolation f x
P
k
j1
f j
Q
k
i1;ij
xi
ji
mod p. Then the secret is
obtained as f(0). However, any k 1 or fewer shadows cannot
get any information about the secret.
Through Shamirs secret sharing scheme, we could take every
secret pixel as a
0
in a (k 1)-degree polynomial f(x) to construct
n random grayscale values on n noise-like shadows. Finally, we
can obtain n noise-like shadows. To further reduce the share size,
Thien and Lins (k, n)-SIS scheme [2] reduced the shadow size by
using all coefcients in f(x) for sharing secret pixels. The encoding
of (k, n)-SIS scheme is described below. We rst divide a secret im-
age into b non-overlapping blocks. Every block has k pixels and is
represented as the (k 1)-degree polynomial f
j
(x), 0 6 j 6 (b 1),
as follows.
f
j
x a
jk
a
jk1
x a
jk2
x
2
a
jkk1
x
k1
modp: 1
By substituting the image identication id, the value of polyno-
mial f
j
(id) is generated using the original pixel values a
jk
, a
jk+1
,
. . . , a
jk+k-1
included in the jth block. Then, all values of f
j
(x),
0 6 j 6 (b 1), are used to generate a shadow. Finally we can use
n different image identication numbers to construct n shadows.
Because we embed k pixels each time, the shadow size is 1/k of
the secret image. Same as Shamirs scheme, we can reconstruct
the polynomial f
j
(x) from k gray-scale values of k shadows to re-
store the secret image.
For sharing image, the prime number p is often chosen as 251
such that the coefcients are constrained between 0 and 250 and
suitable torepresent a conventional 8-bit gray-scale or color images.
However, a possible value of an 8-bit gray pixel is from 0 to 255, so
the gray-scale values (>250) need to be modied to 250. Obviously,
we can use Galois Field GF(2
8
) instead of modulus 251 rather than
ordinary arithmetic to achieve a lossless scheme. For simplicity,
some schemes adopt GF(251), while some papers use GF(2
8
) to
achieve a secret image with no distortion. In this work, we use
GF(2
8
) to embed 256 grayscales in an image to avoid distortion.
2.2. The (k, n)-SSIS scheme
Wang et al. [8] rst combined the scalability and the threshold
property to construct a (2, n)-SSIS scheme. Wang et al.s (2, n)
scheme only considered the case k = 2. In [9,10], two general (k, n)-
SSIS schemes for any values of k and n were proposed. The (k, n)-SSIS
schemeis not exactlysametotheoriginal secret sharingscheme. It is
another type of secret sharing scheme. The conventional (k, n)-SIS
scheme reveals either the entire image for any k or more shadows
or nothing for fewer than k shadows. However, the (k, n)-SSIS
scheme provides the threshold property (i.e., k is a threshold value
necessary to start into reveal the secret) as well as the scalability
(i.e., the information amount of a reconstructed secret is propor-
tional to the number of shadows usedindecryption). Also, whencol-
laborating with all n shadows, the whole secret image can be
reconstructed. Here, we briey review Yang and Chus (k, n)-SSIS
scheme [10], which is the element of our new(t, s, k, n)-ESIS scheme.
This (k, n)-SSIS scheme achieves the smooth scalability, which
the information amount can be smoothly proportional to the
number of shadows. This (k, n)-SSIS scheme is composed of
(n k + 1) (r, n)-SIS schemes where k 6 r 6 n. A secret image I is
subdivided into (n k + 1) sub-images. One sub-image has the size
(k |I|)/n, and other (n k) sub-images have the size (|I|)/n, where
|I| represents the size of secret image I. Afterward, we encrypt the
sub-image of the size (k |I|)/n by (k, n)-SIS scheme, and then en-
crypt other sub-images by (r, n)-SIS schemes, respectively,
(k + 1) 6 r 6 n. All sub-shadows generated from SIS schemes for
the participant i, 1 6 i 6 n, are concatenated as shadow i. Therefore,
when r (k 6 r 6 n) participants are involved in decryption, they can
reconstruct r sub-images.
3. The proposed (t, s, k, n)-ESIS scheme
3.1. Motivation
In this paper, we consider the case for sharing secret image into
shadows, where some shadows with higher importance are essen-
tial. This is a so-called ESIS scheme. Our ESIS scheme has not only
the threshold property (i.e., a threshold value of shadows is neces-
sary to reveal the secret) but also the essentiality (i.e., a threshold
value of essential shadows involved in the recovery process is also
necessary). All previous (k, n)-SIS schemes do not have the essen-
tiality so that the reconstruction has no need of essential shadows.
In this paper, we discuss a general (t, s, k, n)-ESIS scheme. In a (t, s,
k, n)-ESIS scheme, the secret image is shared into n shadows,
including s essential shadows and (ns) non-essential shadows. A
qualied subset of shadows should contain k shadows, including
at least t essential shadow. As shown in Fig. 1, there are s essential
shadows and (ns) non-essential shadows in all shadows. To
reconstruct the secret image, (t + t
0
) essential shadows and
(k t t
0
) non-essential shadows should be participated in the
P. Li et al. / J. Vis. Commun. Image R. 24 (2013) 11061114 1107
reconstruction, where 0 t
0
k t. We do not consider the case
t = k in (t, s, k, n)-ESIS scheme, since t = k implies that the non-
essential shadows have no contributions in reconstruction, and
ESIS scheme is reduced to (t, s)-SIS scheme. Obviously, a (t, s, k,
n)-ESIS scheme is reduced to a traditional (k, n)-SIS scheme for
t = k and s = n. From the denition of threshold secret sharing
scheme, t should be an integer larger than 1. Otherwise, t = 1 im-
plies each shadow can reveal the secret. Therefore, we have
t 6 s 6 n, and t < k 6 n, where t, s, k and n are integers larger than
1. In addition, the number of non-essential shadows in any quali-
ed set should be no more than the whole number of non-essential
shadows. Hence we have k t 6 n s. To sum up, the relationship
between four parameters t, s, k and n are shown as follows.
t s n
t < k n
k s n t
t; s; k and nare integers larger than 1
8
>
>
>
<
>
>
>
:
2
There are various applications in which the reconstruction
should include essential shadows. Below we describe an applica-
tion scenario that can use ESIS scheme. In United Nations Security
Council (UNSC), there are fteen members consisting of ve per-
manent members (China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom,
and the United States) and ten elected non-permanent members.
Under Article 27 of the UN Charter V, the decisions of UNSC on
all non-procedure matters require the afrmative votes of nine
members (i.e., the threshold value is k = 9). According to the rule
of great power unanimity, even though receiving nine votes, a
veto by a permanent member may prevent adoption of a proposal.
This implies that all ve permanent members should give afrma-
tive votes (i.e., the number of essential votes is t = 5). There are to-
tal fteen members (n = 15) including ve permanent members
(s = 5). Therefore, this voting scenario has the similar threshold
property and essentiality like a (5, 5, 9, 15)-ESIS scheme.
There are more examples that can apply ESIS scheme, when
some participants are accorded special privileges due to their sta-
tus or importance, e.g., heads of government, managers of com-
pany, high-level corporate ofcers, major employers, . . . , etc.
Indeed, we may need to deliver special treatments to some persons
for some reasons. Therefore, (t, s, k, n)-ESIS scheme has potential
applications and deserves studying.
3.2. Construction of the proposed (t, s, k, n)-ESIS scheme
In traditional (k, n)-SIS scheme, the threshold of reconstructing
the secret image is k. Let P be the set of all participants. A qualied
subset of participants Q # P should satisfy the threshold condi-
tion: |Q| Pk, where |Q| represents the number of elements in Q.
This condition allows any k participants for reconstruction. Every
participant has the same importance. Let EP and NEP be the set
of essential participants and the set of non-essential participants,
respectively, where P = EP [ NEP. In a (t, s, k, n)-ESIS scheme, we
have |EP| = s and |NEP| = n s. Let Q n NEP denote the set having
elements in Q but not in NEP. A qualied subset of participants Q
should satisfy two conditions:
i Threshold condition :jQj k; 3-1
ii Essentiality condition :jQ n NEPj t: 3-2

In the previous (k, n)-SSIS scheme, the whole secret image can
be reconstructed from all n shadows. In the proposed (t, s, k, n)-ESIS
scheme, we use the modied (k
1
, k
2
, n)-SSIS scheme, where is an
extension of the (k, n)-SSIS scheme. Actually, (k
1
, k
2
, n)-SSIS scheme
will be reduced to the (k, n)-SSIS scheme for k
1
= k and k
2
= n. In
this (k
1
, k
2
, n)-SSIS scheme, one can gradually reveal the secret
from arbitrary k
1
or more shadows, and the whole secret can be
recovered from k
2
shadows. A secret image is rst partitioned into
(k
2
k
1
+ 1) sub-images, by using the multi-secret mode, the prior-
ity mode and the progressive mode [9]. Each sub-image should
hold the disjoint property and the union property. Any two sub-
images do not have the same overlapping information, and the un-
ion of all sub-images is the original image. The disjoint property
provides the scalability, and the union property ensures that k
2
shadows can recover the secret image. Afterwards, each sub-image
is shared by (t, n)-SIS schemes to (k
2
k
1
+ 1)n shadows s
t,i
,
where k
1
6 t 6 k
2
and 1 6 i 6 n. Finally, n shadows are
s
i
s
k
1
;i
ks
k
1
1;i
k ks
k
2
;i
, 1 6 i 6 n. Although we can describe our (t,
s, k, n)-ESIS scheme by using the conventional SIS scheme, using
the concept of (k
1
, k
2
, n)-SSIS scheme is perhaps easier to visualize.
Here, we combine (k, s + k t)-SIS scheme and (1, k t, n s)-
SSIS scheme together to construct our (t, s, k, n)-ESIS scheme. The
secret image is rst encrypted by (k, s + k t)-SIS scheme to
generate (s + k t) shadows. Then, we give s shadows to s essential
participants. The remaining (k t) shadows (referred to as interme-
diate shadows) are further shared to (n s) non-essential shadows
Fig. 1. Shadows in the (t, s, k, n)-ESIS scheme.
Fig. 2. Diagrammatical representation of the proposed (t, s, k, n)-ESIS scheme.
1108 P. Li et al. / J. Vis. Commun. Image R. 24 (2013) 11061114
by using (1, k t, n s)-SSIS scheme. Fig. 2 demonstrates the pro-
posed (t, s, k, n)-ESIS scheme. The formal encryption and decryption
of our (t, s, k, n)-ESIS are shown in Algorithms 1 and 2, respectively.
Notations used in our algorithms are dened below.
Notation used
I The secret image with the size |I|.
E
k,s+k-t
( ) Encryption function of(k, s + k t)-SIS scheme,
and its reverse function is
D
k;skt
.
E
1,k-t,n-s
( ) Encryption function of(1, k t, n s)-SSIS
scheme with input: (k t) sub-images and
output: (ns) shadows, and its reverse function is
D
1,k-t,n-s
( ).
I
j
The (s + k t) shadows generated by E
k,s+k-t
(I) = I
j
,
1 6 j 6 s + k t.
s
i
The (n s) shadows generated by
E
1;kt;ns
I
s1
; . . . ; I
skt
s
i
, 1 6 i 6 n s.
O
i
The n shadows of the proposed (t, s, k, n)-ESIS scheme,
1 6 i 6 n.
Algorithm 1. Encryption of the proposed (t, s, k, n)-ESIS
scheme
Input: a secret image I; the values of t, s, k and n.
Output: n shadowsO
i
, 1 6 i 6 n.
(1-1) Obtain I
j
= E
k,s+k-t
(I), 1 6 j 6 s + k t;
/ take I
1
I
s
as essential shadows and I
s+1
I
s+k-t
as the
input of (1, k t, n s)-SSIS scheme /
(1-2) Obtain s
i
= E
1,k-t,n-s
(I
s+1
, . . . , I
s+k-t
), 1 6 i 6 n s;
(1-3) for i = 1 to s O
i
= I
i
; for i = s + 1 to n O
i
= s
i-s
;
(1-4) Output n shadows O
1
, O
2
, . . . , O
n
.
Algorithm 2. Decryption of the proposed (t, s, k, n)-ESIS
scheme
Input: l(Pk) shadows including t or more essential shadows.
/ Suppose that there are l
1
(Pt) essential shadows (say
O
1
O
l
1
) and l
2
non-essential shadows (say O
s1
O
sl
2
),
where l
1
+ l
2
= l /
Output: the secret image I.
(2-1) I
1
O
1
; I
2
O
2
; . . . ; I
l
1
O
l
1
;
/ note: since O
1
O
l
1
are essential shadows
/(2-2) If (l
2
< k t) then obtain l
2
intermediate shadows
I
s1
; . . . ; I
sl
2
D
1;kt;ns
O
s1
; . . . ; O
sl
2
;
(2-3) Obtain I D
k;skt
I
1
; . . . ; I
l
1
; I
s1
; . . . ; I
sl
2
.
/ note: l
1
l
2
l k achieves the threshold of
D
k,s+k-t
( )/
(2-4) If (l
2
Pk t) then obtain(k t) intermediate shadows
I
s1
; . . . ; I
skt
D
1;kt;ns
O
s1
; . . . ; O
sl
2
;
(2-5) Obtain I D
k;skt
I
1
; . . . ; I
l
1
; I
s1
; . . . ; I
skt
.
/ note: since l
1
Pt, so l
1
k t k achieves the
threshold of D
k,s+k-t
( )/
Theorem 1. The proposed scheme is a (t, s, k, n)-ESIS scheme with the
essential shadow size and non-essential shadow size are 1/k and H
k-t
/k
times to the secret image, respectively, where H
kt
is the harmonic
number.
Proof. To prove the proposed scheme is a (t, s, k, n)-ESIS scheme,
we need to prove if and only if the threshold condition and the
essentiality condition are satised, the secret image can be recov-
ered. We rst prove that the violation of any one condition cannot
recover the secret. Suppose that l shadows are involved for recon-
struction, and that there are l
1
essential shadows and l
2
non-essen-
tial shadows, where l = l
1
+ l
2
. If condition (31) is unsatised, i.e.,
l < k, even though l
2
P(k t), one can get only (l
1
+ k t) 6
(l
1
+ l
2
) < k essential shadows for D
k,s+k-t
(). Therefore, the secret
cannot be reconstructed. On the other hand, if condition (32) is
unsatised, i.e., l
1
< t, even though l
2
P(k t), one can get only
(l
1
+ k t) < (t + k t) = k essential shadows for D
k,s+k-t
(). There-
fore, the secret cannot be reconstructed.
Next, we prove that conditions (31) and (32) are satised
then we can reconstruct the secret. At this time, we have l Pk
(conditions (31)) and l
1
Pt (conditions (32)).About the value of
l
2
, we consider two cases: (i) l
2
< (k t) and (ii) l
2
P(k t).
Case (i): From l
2
non-essential shadows, we can recover l
2
essential shadows from (1, k t, n s)-SSIS scheme. Thus, we have
l
1
+ l
2
= l Pk essential shadows to recover the secret image using
(k, s + k t)-SIS scheme.
Case (ii): From l
2
non-essential shadows, we can recover (k t)
essential shadows from (1, k t, n s)-SSIS scheme. Thus, we have
l
1
+ (k t) Pt + (k t) = k essential shadows to recover the secret
image using (k, s + k t)-SIS scheme.
Afterwards, we nd the essential shadow size and non-essential
shadow size. In Algorithm 1, the essential shadows are O
1
O
s
and
the non-essential shadows are O
s+1
O
n
. Since O
i
, 1 6 i 6 s, are
generated from E
k,s+k-t
(I), their shadow sizes are |I|/k. The non-
essential shadows O
i
, s + 1 6 i 6 n, are generated from (1, k t, n
s)-SSIS scheme using (k t) intermediate shadows O
s+1
O
n
as the
inputs. From Fig. 2, it is observed that
O
s1
s
s1;1
ks
s2;1
k ks
skt;1
. Thus, we have
jO
s1
j js
s1;1
j js
s2;1
j js
skt;1
j
jI
s1
j jI
s2
j=2 jI
skt
j=k t
jIj=k jIj=2k jIj=kk t
jIj=k 1 1=2 1=k t H
kt
=k jIj: 4
By the same approach, we have jO
s2
j jO
n
j H
kt
=k jIj. h
To further illustrate the proposed scheme, we give the following
example of (2, 3, 5, 7)-ESIS scheme.
Example 1. For a (2, 3, 5, 7)-ESIS scheme, the secret image is
shared into 7 shadows, including 3 essential shadows and 4 non-
essential shadows. According to Algorithm 1, the secret image is
rst shared by (5, 6)-SIS scheme. The generated 6 shadows are
divided into two groups: 3 shadows are taken as essential
shadows, and the other 3 shadows are intermediate shadows for
further processing. Then intermediate shadows are further shared
into 4 non-essential shadows by (1, 3, 4)-SSIS scheme. That is, the
rst intermediate shadow is given to 4 non-essential shadows, the
second intermediate shadow is divided into 4 shares by (2, 4)-SIS
scheme, and the third intermediate shadow is divided into 4 shares
by (3, 4)-SIS scheme. Each non-essential shadow is the concate-
nation of the rst intermediate shadow and the corresponding
shares of (2, 4)-SIS scheme and (3, 4)-SIS scheme. Since (k, n)-SIS
scheme generates shares with 1/k size of the secret image, each
essential shadow and non-essential shadow have the size 1/5 and
11/30 times of the secret image, respectively.
In revealing process, it should gather 5 shadows including 2
essential shadows. Without loss of generality, we take 2 essential
shadows and 3 non-essential shadows to reveal the secret image.
By Algorithm 2, 3 non-essential shadows can reveal 3 intermediate
shadows. These 3 intermediate shadows and 2 essential shadows
are 5 shadows of (5, 6)-SIS scheme. Therefore, the secret image
can be revealed by (5, 6)-SIS scheme. h
P. Li et al. / J. Vis. Commun. Image R. 24 (2013) 11061114 1109
3.3. The Modied (t, s, k, n)-ESIS scheme
Since (H
k-t
/k) |I| > |I|/k, the non-essential shadow size is larger
than essential shadow size, and its size increases as (kt) increases.
The non-essential shadow size can be further reduced when
k > (s + 1). In this case, a qualied subset of shadows should contain
not only t essential shadows at least, but also (k s) non-essential
shadows at least. Lets concatenate the rst (k s) intermediate
shadows as the rst intermediate shadow. Therefore, we have
s t + 1 new intermediate shadows. Finally, these new intermedi-
ate shadows are shared into (n s) non-essential shadows by
(k s, k t, n s)-SSIS scheme. In this way, the non-essential sha-
dow size is smaller than that generated by ESIS in Section 3.2. Fig. 3
demonstrates the (k s, k t, n s)-SSIS scheme employed in the
modied (t, s, k, n)-ESIS scheme. Encryption of the modied (t, s, k,
n)-ESIS scheme is shown in Algorithm 3, and its decryption is same
as Algorithm 2.
Algorithm 3. Encryption of the modied (t, s, k, n)-ESIS-I
scheme
Input: a secret image I; the values of t, s, k and n.
Output: n shadows O
i
, 1 6 i 6 n.
(3-1) Obtain I
j
= E
k,s+k-t
(I), 1 6 j 6 s + k t;
(3-2) I
s+(k-s)
= I
s+1
k I
s+2
k k I
s+(k-s)
;/ concatenate
I
s+1
I
s+(k-s)
as a new intermediate shadow I
s+(k-s)
/
(3-3) Obtain s
i
= E
k-s,k-t,n-s
(I
s+(k-s)
, I
s+(k-s)+1
, . . ., I
s+k-t
),
1 6 i 6 n s;/ The (k s, k t, n s)-SSIS is shown in
Fig. 3/
(3-4) for i = 1 to s O
i
= I
i
; for i = s + 1 to n O
i
= s
i-s
;
(3-5) Output n shadows O
1
, O
2
, . . . , O
n
.
The following theorem shows the advantage of reducing sha-
dow size for the modied ESIS scheme.
Theorem 2. The modied scheme is a (t, s, k, n)-ESIS scheme and the
non-essential shadow size is (1 + H
k-t
H
k-s
)/k times to the secret
image.
Proof. As shown in Fig. 3, the (k s, k t, ns)-SSIS scheme used
in the modied (t, s, k, n)-ESIS scheme can reconstruct (k s)
essential shadows (I
s+1
I
s+(k-s)
) from (k s) non-essential shad-
ows, and (k s + 1) essential shadows (I
s+1
I
s+(k-s)+1
) from
(k s + 1) non-essential shadows, . . ., and (k t) essential shadows
(I
s+1
I
s+(k-t)
) from (k t) non-essential shadows. Suppose that
there are l
1
(t 6 l
1
6 s) essential shadows involved in reconstruc-
tion. Since k > s, we need (k l
1
) non-essential shadows. By
(k s, k t, n s)-SSIS scheme, we can get (k l
1
) essential shad-
ows by (k s, k t, ns)-SSIS scheme since (k l
1
) P(k s).
Finally, one can have l
1
+ (k l
1
) = k essential shadows to recon-
struct the secret image by (k, s + k t)-SIS scheme.
The non-essential shadow size is calculated as follows.
O
s1
js
sks;1
j js
sks1;1
j js
skt;1
j
jI
sks
j=k s jI
sks1
j=k s 1
jI
skt
j=k t
jI
s1
j ::: jI
sks
j=k s jIj=kk s 1
jIj=kk t
jIj=k jIj=kk s 1 jIj=kk t
1 H
kt
H
ks
=k jIj: 5
By the same approach, we have jO
s2
j jO
n
j
1 H
kt
H
ks
=k jIj. h
The following example can further explain the modied ESIS
scheme in advantage of reducing non-essential shadow size.
Example 2. We use modied (2, 3, 5, 7)-ESIS scheme for example,
since5 > 3 + 1. The secret imageis rst sharedby(5, 6)-SISschemeto
generated 6 shadows including 3 essential shadows and 3 interme-
diate shadows. Then the rst and the second intermediate shadows
are concatenated as a new intermediate shadow. The new interme-
diate shadow and the third intermediate shadow are used to
generate 4 non-essential shadows by (2, 3, 4)-SSIS scheme. Obvi-
ously, we have the essential shadow size and the non-essential
shadowsize are 1/5 and 4/15 times of the secret image, respectively.
Compared with the results in Example 1, the modied ESIS scheme
canreduce non-essential shadowsize inthis (2, 3, 5, 7)-ESIS scheme.
The revealing process is the same as that in Example 1. h
4. Experiment and comparison
4.1. Experimental results
We conduct two experiments (Examples 3 and 4) in an attempt
to test the effectiveness of the proposed (t, s, k, n)-ESIS scheme and
the modied (t, s, k, n)-ESIS scheme.
Example 3. Test the proposed (2, 4, 4, 8)-ESIS scheme by using the
secret image Lena.A secret image 300 300-pixel Lena (Fig. 4(a)) is
shared by (4, 6)-SIS scheme into 6 (4 + 4 2 = 6) shadows,
Fig. 3. The (k s, k t, ns)-SSIS scheme used in the modied (t, s, k, n)-ESIS scheme.
1110 P. Li et al. / J. Vis. Commun. Image R. 24 (2013) 11061114
including 4 essential shadows (I
1
I
4
, also referred to as O
1
O
4
) and 2
intermediate shadows (I
5
and I
6
). Two intermediate shadows are
used as the inputs of (1, 2, 4)-SSIS scheme to generate 4 non-
essential shadows (O
5
O
8
). Finally, we have 4 essential shadows
with the size 150 150 pixels (see Fig. 4(b)), and 4 non-essential
shadows with the size 150 225 pixels (Fig. 4(c)). Suppose that we
have four shadows O
1
, O
2
, O
3
and O
6
, we can obtain I
5
fromO
6
. Then,
the secret image can be recovered by I = D
4,6
(O
1
, O
2
, O
3
, I
5
). h
Example 4. Test the modied (2, 3, 5, 8)-ESIS scheme by using the
secret image Lena.
Since k = 5 and s = 3, we can implement the ESIS scheme by
Algorithm 3. A secret image is shared by (5, 6)-SIS scheme into 6
(5 + 3 2 = 6) shadows, including 3 essential shadows (I
1
I
3
, also
referred to as O
1
O
3
) and 3intermediate shadows (I
4
I
6
). Then,
encoding (I
4
k I
5
) and I
6
by (2, 3, 5)-SSIS scheme, we have
E
2,3,5
((I
4
k I
5
), I
6
) to generate 5 non-essential shadows (O
4
O
8
).
Finally, we have 3 essential shadows with the size 300 60 pixels
(see Fig. 5(a)), and 5 non-essential shadows with the size 300 80
pixels (Fig. 5(b)). For decoding, a qualied subset of shadows, e.g.,
{O
1
, O
3
, O
5
, O
7
, O
8
} can be used to recover the secret image. We rst
obtain I
4
I
6
from D
2,3,5
(O
5
, O
7
, O
8
), and then we recover the secret
image by I = D
5,6
(O
1
, O
3
, I
4
, I
5
, I
6
). h
4.2. Comparison
A comparison of the (t, s, k, n)-ESIS schemes for 2 6 t 6 5, n = 8,
and some values of s and k, are given in Table 1, where the values of
R
e
(resp. R
n
) is the ratio of essential shadow size (resp. non-essen-
tial shadow size) to the secret image size. Since H
k-t
/k>(1 + H
k-t
H
k-s
)/k fork>(s + 1), so our modied scheme really has the less
non-essential shadow size as compared with the proposed scheme.
From Fig. 3, it is observed that the (k s, k t, ns)-SSIS scheme is
the (1, k t, ns)-SSIS scheme for k = s + 1, and thus the modied (t,
s, k, n)-ESIS will be reduced to the proposed scheme. Therefore, in
Table 1, we only show the proposed scheme for (s, k) = (3, 4) and (4,
5). For t = s, since k > t we have k > s. Thus, the modied scheme is
used for the case t = s. At this time, the non-essential shadow size is
1 H
kt
H
ks
=k jIj 1 H
kt
H
kt
=k jIj jIj=k, which
is same to the essential shadow size. Consider the case k=(t + 1),
since H
kt
=k jIj H
1
=k jIj jIj=k, the essential and no-essen-
tial shadows has the same size.
All essential shadows have shadow size ration R
e
= 1/k. The non-
essential shadow size ratios of the proposed scheme and the mod-
ied scheme are R
n
H
kt
=k and R
n
= (1 + H
k-t
H
k-s
)/k, respec-
tively. Fig. 6 shows shadow size ratios of our schemes for t = 2,
2 6 s 6 6, and 3 6 k 6 20. The value of R
n
H
kt
=k is variant of t
Fig. 4. The proposed (2, 4, 4, 8)-ESIS scheme: (a) the secret image of 512 512 pixels (b) four essential shadows of 256 256 pixels (c) four non-essential shadows of
256 384 pixels.
Fig. 5. The modied (2, 3, 5, 8)-ESIS scheme: (a) three essential shadows of 300 60 pixels (b) ve non-essential shadows of 300 80 pixels.
P. Li et al. / J. Vis. Commun. Image R. 24 (2013) 11061114 1111
and k, while R
n
1 H
kt
H
ks
=k varies with t, s and k simulta-
neously. For the case t = s = 2, the modied scheme has |R
n
| = |R
e
|. It
is observed that the R
n
of modied scheme approaches to R
e
.
We also compare ESIS scheme with WSIS scheme, since both
schemes differ the role of participants. ESIS and WSIS use different
way to deal with the participants with different importance. In
WSIS scheme, the importance of a participant is represented by
weight. The higher importance of a participant, the larger weight
he has. The revealing condition for a qualied subset of partici-
pants is that the sum of their weights is larger than the threshold
value. WSIS scheme can be used in the situation where the weight
of each participant can be quantied explicitly. However, in some
cases, it is difcult or unnecessary to assign each participant a
weight according to their status, and difcult to determine a
threshold weight value for revealing. Different from WSIS scheme,
ESIS scheme only need to divide all participants into two groups
according to their status: essential group for higher level, and
non-essential group for lower level. Two threshold values should
be determined for all participants and the essential participants in-
volved in revealing process, respectively. Therefore, ESIS scheme
can be implemented more convenience than WSIS scheme in
practice.
Actually, both ESIS scheme and WSIS scheme can be seen as a
special case of SIS scheme with general access structure. If they
have the same access structure, then they are equivalent. For
example, in a (2, 3, 3, 5)-ESIS scheme, there are four participants:
A, B, C, D, and E. Let A, B and C be essential participants, D and E
be non-essential participants. Obviously, we have all the minimal
qualied subsets of participants as: {A, B, C}, {A, B, D}, {A, B, E},
{A, C, D}, {A, C, E}, {B, C, D} and {B, C, E}. Also, we can construct a
WSIS scheme with the same access structure as (2, 3, 3, 5)-ESIS
scheme. Without loss of generality, we assign each essential partic-
ipant with weight 2, and non-essential participant with weight 1,
respectively. The threshold value for revealing is determined as
5. Therefore, its easy to prove that this WSIS scheme has the same
access structure as (2, 3, 3, 5)-ESIS scheme. Actually, ESIS scheme
can be represented as Lin et al.s [19] WSIS scheme conditionally.
The following Theorem makes a clear explanation.
Theorem 3. A (t, s, k, n)-ESIS scheme cannot be represented by an
equivalent WSIS scheme in the following two cases:
Case 1 : s k; k t 2; and n t s k 2
Case 2 : s < k; s t 1; and n t s k 2
Proof. To design a WSIS scheme which is equivalent to (t, s, k, n)-
ESIS scheme, the access structure of WSIS scheme should be same
as ESIS scheme. In another word, ESIS scheme and WSIS scheme
should have the same qualied subsets. For a WSIS scheme, the
weights of all shadows and a threshold weight h for revealing must
be assigned rst. Since all essential shadows have the same impor-
tance, their weights should be the same value, denoted by w
1
. Sim-
ilarly, we denote the weight of each non-essential shadow as w
2
.
Obviously, w
1
> w
2
, since essential shadows are much more impor-
tant than non-essential shadows. In order to make WSIS scheme
satises the threshold condition, we need restrict the values of
w
1
, w
2
and h. For a minimal qualied subset of shadows with k
shadows including at least t essential shadows, the total weight
of these shadows should no less than threshold h. For simplicity,
the threshold value h is determined by the total weight of t essen-
tial shadows and (k t) non-essential shadows. Hence we have:
tw
1
k tw
2
h 6
Also, any subset of shadows contained less than t essential
shadows is a forbidden set, and cannot reveal the secret image.
In another word, the total weight of t-1 essential shadows and all
non-essential shadows is less than h in WSIS scheme, that is:
t 1w
1
n sw
2
< h 7
In addition, a subset contain any k 1 shadows is still a forbid-
den set, which means the total weight of any k 1 shadows should
be less than h in WSIS scheme. Obviously, we have:
k 1w
1
< h for s k 8
Table 1
Comparison of (t, s, k, n)-ESIS schemes for 2 6 t 6 5, and n = 8.
t s, k
s = 3, k = 4
a
s = 3, k = 5 s = 4, k = 4
a
s = 4, k = 5
a
s = 4, k = 6 s = 5, k = 7
Proposed
scheme
Proposed
scheme
Modied
scheme
Proposed
scheme
Proposed
scheme
Proposed
scheme
Modied
scheme
Proposed
scheme
Modied
scheme
2 R
e
1/4 1/5 1/5 1/4 1/5 1/6 1/6 1/7 1/7
R
n
3/8 11/30 4/15 3/8 11/30 25/72 19/72 137/420 107/420
3 R
e
1/4 1/5 1/5 1/4 1/5 1/6 1/6 1/7 1/7
R
n
1/4
b
3/10 1/5
b
1/4
c
3/10 11/36 2/9 25/84 19/84
4 R
e
1/5 1/6 1/6 1/7 1/7
R
n
1/5
c
3/12 1/6
c
11/42 4/21
5 R
e
1/7 1/7
R
n
3/14 1/7
b
a
For k = (s + 1), the proposed scheme is the modied scheme.
b
For t = s, the modied scheme has R
e
= R
n
.
c
For k = t + 1, the proposed scheme has R
e
= R
n
.
Fig. 6. The shadow size ratio of our schemes for t = 2, 2 6 s 6 6, and 3 6 k 6 20.
1112 P. Li et al. / J. Vis. Commun. Image R. 24 (2013) 11061114
sw
1
k s 1w
2
< h for s < k 9
Combining with Eqs. (6) and (7), we can get
w
1
w
2
> n t s k 10
Case (i): s Pk. By Eqs. (6), (8), and (10), we have:
n t s k <
w
1
w
2
<
k t
k t 1
Sub-case (a): k t = 1. Obviously, the possible values of w
1
and
w
2
can be chosen by the following equation.
n t s k <
w
1
w
2
Sub-case (b): k t P2. It is easy to prove that:
1 <
k t
k t 1
2
Hence we can nd the possible values of w
1
and w
2
if and only if
n + t s k 6 1. In another word, when s Pk, k t P2, and
n + t s k P2, we cannot construct an equivalent WSIS scheme
for (t, s, k, n)-ESIS scheme.
Case (ii): s < k. Combining Eqs. (6), (9), and (10), we can get
n t s k <
w
1
w
2
<
s t 1
s t
Sub-case (a): s t = 0. Also, we can nd the possible values of
w
1
and w
2
if the following equation satised.
n t s k <
w
1
w
2
Sub-case (b): s t P1. It is clear that
1 <
s t 1
s t
2
Therefore, we can get the possible values of w
1
and w
2
if and
only if n + t-s-k 6 1.
To sum up, a (t, s, k, n)-ESIS scheme cannot be represent by an
equivalent WSIS scheme in the following two cases:
Case 1 : s k; k t 2; and n t s k 2
Case 2 : s < k; s t 1; and n t s k 2
h
Theorem 3 shows when a (t, s, k, n)-ESIS scheme can be repre-
sented by a WSIS scheme, and how to get the possible values of
shadowweights and threshold weight h. In Lin et al.s WSIS scheme
[19], the shadow size is the w/h times of the secret image, where w
is the shadows weight. With equation (6) in mind, it is easy to
prove that w
1
/h > 1/k and w
2
/h < 1/k. Obviously we have that each
essential (resp. non-essential) shadow is larger (resp. smaller) than
1/k times of secret image in WSIS scheme. Recall that the size of
essential (resp. non-essential) shadow is equal to (resp. larger
than) 1/k times of the secret image in (t, s, k, n)-ESIS scheme, the
essential (resp. non-essential) shadow size of ESIS scheme is smal-
ler (larger) than that in WSIS scheme. Different from WSIS scheme,
the importance of essential participants in ESIS scheme is not re-
ected by their shadow size. It is realized by the structure of ESIS
scheme. Therefore, essential participants with higher importance
dont need to hold shadows with the size larger than non-essential
participants.
In addition, we compare the proposed ESIS scheme with some
existing SIS schemes. As shown in Table 2, both WSIS scheme
and ESIS scheme have the property to distinguish the importance
of shadows. However, only ESIS scheme has the essentiality, which
means a threshold for essential shadows should be satised in
revealing.
5. Conclusion
In this work, we propose a new (t, s, k, n)-ESIS scheme, where
essential shadows are more important than non-essential shad-
ows. A qualied subset of shadows Q should satisfy the threshold
condition (|Q| Pk) and the essentiality condition (|QnNEP Pt). In
our ESIS schemes, the non-essential shadow size is large than the
essential shadow size. Design of a (t, s, k, n)-ESIS scheme with
the small non-essential shadow size requires further study.
Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the Fundamental Research Funds
for the Central Universities (No. 13MS107). Thanks for the anony-
mous reviewers constructive comments and suggestions.
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Table 2
Comparison of properties among some existing SIS schemes and the proposed ESIS scheme.
Properties Scheme in
[2]
Schemes in
[37]
Schemes in
[810]
Schemes in
[1113]
Schemes in
[15,16]
Scheme in
[19]
The proposed ESIS
scheme
Construction method PSIS PSIS PSIS PSIS and VCS MSIS PSIS PSIS
Threshold property Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Steganography and authentication
ability
No Yes No No No No No
Scalability No No Yes No No No No
Previewing image by stacking
shadows
No No No Yes No No No
Different importance of shadows No No No No No Yes Yes
Essentiality No No No No No No Yes
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