896
2, FEBRUARY 2019
Improving the Visual Quality of Size-Invariant
Visual Cryptography for Grayscale Images:
An Analysis-by-Synthesis (AbS) Approach
Bin Yan , Member, IEEE, Yong Xiang , Senior Member, IEEE, and Guang Hua , Member, IEEE
Abstract— In visual cryptography (VC) for grayscale image,
size reduction leads to bad perceptual quality to the reconstructed
secret image. To improve the quality, the current efforts are
limited to the design of VC algorithm for binary image, and
measuring the quality with metrics that are not directly related
to how the human visual system perceives halftone images.
We propose an analysis-by-synthesis (AbS) framework to integrate
the halftoning process and the VC encoding: the secret pixel/block
is reconstructed from the shares in the encoder and the error
between the reconstructed secret and the original secret images
is fed back and compensated concurrently by the error diffusion
process. In doing so, the error between the reconstructed secret
and original secret is pushed to high frequency band, thus
producing visually pleasing reconstructed secret image. This
framework is simple and flexible in that it can be combined
with many existing size-invariant VC algorithms, including
probabilistic VC, random grid VC, and vector/block VC. More
importantly, it is proved that this AbS framework is as secure as
the traditional VC algorithms. Experimental results demonstrate
the effectiveness of the proposed AbS framework.
Index Terms— Size-invariant visual cryptography, grayscale
image, visual quality, analysis-by-synthesis (AbS), vector visual
cryptography.
I. I NTRODUCTION
V ISUAL cryptograph (VC) is a secret sharing technique,
where the decoding is done by stacking of shares [1]. The
secret holder splits his secret image into n shares, prints them
onto transparencies, and then distributes the transparencies
to n participants. For some designated groups of participants
(the qualified sets), if they superimpose their transparencies,
Manuscript received June 14, 2016; revised May 22, 2017, July 9, 2018,
and September 29, 2018; accepted October 2, 2018. Date of publication
October 8, 2018; date of current version October 22, 2018. This work was
supported in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China
(NSFC) under Grant 61272432, in part by the Shandong Provincial Natural
Science Foundation under Grant ZR2014JL044, in part by the Australian
Research Council under Grant LP170100458, and in part by the Hubei
Provincial Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant 2018CFB225.
The associate editor coordinating the review of this manuscript and approv-
ing it for publication was Prof. Patrick Le Callet. (Corresponding author:
Yong Xiang.)
B. Yan is with the College of Electronics, Communication and Physics,
Shandong University of Science and Technology, Qingdao 266590, China
(e-mail: yanbinhit@hotmail.com).
Y. Xiang is with the School of Information Technology, Deakin University,
Melbourne, VIC 3125, Australia (e-mail: yxiang@deakin.edu.au).
G. Hua is with the School of Electronic Information, Wuhan University,
Wuhan 430072, China (e-mail: ghua@whu.edu.cn).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available
online at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TIP.2018.2874378
1057-7149 © 2018 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission.
See http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON IMAGE PROCESSING, VOL. 28, NO.
the secret image can be reconstructed with sufficient fidelity
and can be identified by the human visual system (HVS). But
for other groups of participants, i.e., those in the forbidden
sets, no information about the secret should be recovered
from the shares. The first requirement of VC is called the
contrast condition, and the second one is called the security
condition. In a (k, n)-threshold VC, any group with d < k
participants belongs to the forbidden set, and any group
with d ≥ k participants belongs to the qualified set.
As a cryptography algorithm, the security condition is a
hard constraint: if the security condition is violated, then the
system is considered as unacceptable. So when designing the
VC algorithm for grayscale images, one should optimize the
visual quality subject to security constraint. This is different
from some information hiding systems for halftone image that
use superposition for watermark decoding, where the fidelity
is optimized with no security constraint [2].
Improving the quality of the reconstructed secret image
(which will be referred to as the target image in this paper)
and reducing the size expansion have been the focuses of
VC research in recent years. VC with small or no size
expansion is usually preferred since it imposes less burden
on processing, storage and transmission of the shares. Many
algorithms were proposed for size-invariant VC, including
the random grid (RG) algorithms [3]–[5], probabilistic algo-
rithms [6], [7], and block encoding algorithms [8], [9]. How-
ever, it is observed that reducing the size expansion brings low
perceptual quality to the target image, especially for grayscale
secret images.
Grayscale VC generates n binary share images from a
grayscale secret image. This paper focuses on improving the
visual quality of the recovered secret image under this setting.
This focus is different from previous works on improving the
visual quality of the share images in extended VC [10], [11],
where the secret image is a simple binary logo image. This
focus is also different from the work in [12] where the secret
image is a binary image from thresholding a grayscale image.
Furthermore, we focus on the strict sense VC, where decoding
is done by stacking, not by XOR operation [13].
The current researches on size-invariant grayscale VC can
be categorized into two frameworks:
• Separate halftoning and VC encoding [8], [14]–[18].
The grayscale secret image is first halftoned or simply
quantized by two level quantizer to generate a binary
image (These two types of binary images will be called
YAN et al.: IMPROVING THE VISUAL QUALITY OF SIZE-INVARIANT VC FOR GRAYSCALE IMAGES: AbS APPROACH
halftone image and thresholded image, respectively).
Then the various size-invariant VC algorithms for binary
image can be applied to this binary image. This category
encompasses most of the existing algorithms.
• Direct block quantization and mapping [9], [19]. The
average intensity of a small block is quantized to different
levels, and these levels are in turn represented by different
binary patterns in the target image to approximate the
local intensity.
Two major problems exist in these frameworks. First,
an inherent lossy mapping from the secret pixel/block to
the reconstructed pixel/block (which will be referred to as
the target pixel/block/vector) is not compensated by other
pixels/blocks. Due to the security condition, the target image
has limited ability in representing the binary secret image. So
from the secret block to the target block, there is a many-to-
one lossy mapping.
Second, the perceptual quality of the target image is not
directly addressed, or the metrics used do not reflect how the
HVS perceives a halftone image. In particular, the important
spectral property of the target image is not considered in the
design and evaluation of VC algorithms. The block variance
and global contrast are two commonly used quality metrics.
The block variance is not a metric for measuring the qual-
ity of halftone target image [8], [14]. The global contrast
metric is also designed for binary secret image. Recently,
efforts have been made to produce blue noise patterns on
shares [17]. However, the stacking or random sampling of
two blue noise shares is no longer blue noise. So this
type of algorithms work well only on thresholded grayscale
image.
To address the two problems outlined above, we propose
an analysis-by-synthesis (AbS) framework: the encryption of
the secret image into shares is considered as an analysis
step, while the stacking of the shares to reconstruct the
secret image (i.e., the target image) is a synthesis step.
In AbS, we let the target image to be fed back to the analysis
process, so that the difference between the current target
block/pixel and the grayscale secret block/pixel is known to the
encryption process. Then, the halftoning in encryption process
can adjust its strategy in producing the binary block/pixel to
the VC encoder, in order to compensate for this difference.
Specifically, we put the VC encryption and decoding stages
into the loop of error diffusion-based halftoning. This error
diffusion is different from the error diffusion in ordinary
halftoning. It is not the error between the halftone image and
the grayscale image that is fed back, but the error between the
original secret image and the target image (whose quality is
of concern) that is fed back.
This AbS framework is quite flexible in that it can be used
in any (n, n)-threshold scheme, including probabilistic VC,
random grid VC and block VC. The resulting system is
perfectly secure if the basic VC algorithm is perfectly secure.
Since a local or temporary stacking result needs to be fed back
to the halftoning stage, this framework is suitable for error
diffusion-based halftoning and halftoning using direct binary
search (DBS), but is not suitable for halftoning using ordered
dithering.
897
The contributions of this work can be summarized as
follows:
• An AbS framework for (n, n)-threshold VC, having
significantly improved quality of the target image, and
satisfying the security condition (in the sense of per-
fect secrecy). Using this framework, we also provide
detailed algorithms for AbS-based probabilistic VC and
AbS-based vector VC.
• Introducing and designing of quality metrics for the target
image that are relevant to the HVS. We introduce the
quality metric, radially averaged power spectrum density
(RAPSD), that is traditionally not used in evaluating the
quality of target image in VC. In addition, we design a
new metric, the residual variance, to quantify the level
of residual noise in the frequency band to which HVS is
sensitive.
This paper is organized as follows. We formulate the size-
invariant grayscale VC problem in section II. The AbS-based
probabilistic VC and AbS-based vector VC are presented in
sections III and IV, respectively, along with the corresponding
experimental results. The conclusion is given in section V.
II. P ROBLEM F ORMULATION
In this section, we first define the security condition and
contrast condition for size-invariant VC with grayscale secret
image. Then, we present our general AbS framework.
A. Representing Pixel on Transparency by Light
Transmittance
In VC, ‘1’ (‘0’ resp.) is used to denote a black (white resp.)
pixel, and the stacking operation is logic ‘OR’. This is
advantageous for binary VC. But it is not directly related to
the physical quantities that characterize the light transmission
through the transparencies or intensity of light from a display
device. So it is not suitable for joint halftoning and VC.
This paper uses light transmittance to represent pixels on
transparencies or display devices, which is also convenient for
developing multitone VC.
Light transmittance is the ratio between the intensity of
the outgoing light and the intensity of the incoming light.
A region with light transmittance 0 ≤ β ≤ 1 lets only a
proportion of β of the incoming intensity to appear in the
outgoing light. A white pixel is represented by β = 1, while
for a black pixel β = 0. This representation is convenient for
joint halftoning and VC encryption. Furthermore, extension to
multitone printing is straightforward. If we stack two points
having light transmittances β1 and β2 , respectively, then the
resulting transmittance is β1 β2 .
Denote vectors and matrices by boldface letters. The
grayscale secret image J [n] is of M rows and N columns,
where n = [nr , n c ] is the two dimensional index with row
index nr and column index n c . It should be noted that n is
used to denote the number of shares in VC.
B. Definition of Size-Invariant VC for Grayscale Image
The general structure for a grayscale VC system is shown
in Fig. 1. The secret image J [n] is a grayscale image.
It is divided into n share images s1 [n] , · · · , sn [n] by the
898 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON IMAGE PROCESSING, VOL. 28, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2019

Fig. 1. The general structure of the VC system for grayscale image.

VC encoder. These share images are binary images with Fig. 2. The block diagram of the proposed framework.
meaningless appearance, and are printed on transparencies.
The VC decoder can recover the content of the secret image 
by simply stacking the shares. The reconstructed secret image random vector f  si1 [n] , · · · , sid [n] , where  = 1, 2,
(i.e., the target image) Jˆ [n] is obtained from
no additional information about J [n] can be derived,

n
i.e., Pr {J [n] = a} = Pr {J [n] = a | f }, ∀a ∈ C.
Jˆ [n] = si [n] . (1) Remark 1: The requirement that the distributions of f1
i=1 and f2 are independent of n is to ensure that the pixels on
In this work, we focus on the design of grayscale VC encoder. the same share are independent of each other. This definition
Before designing the size-invariant VC for grayscale image, is also valid for multitone shares [20].
we need to identify and define the desired properties of this
VC system. More specifically, we focus on such a system with C. The Proposed Framework
halftone/multitone share images. The definition is motivated by
The proposed framework is illustrated in Fig. 2. The
the specialty of the halftone/multitone share images. Given a
VC encryption and stacking are done in a pixel/block-by-pixel/
constant grayscale image J [n] = g, ∀n and the corresponding
block basis. The input image J [n] is mapped by gamut map-
halftone image I [n], and suppose that the set of colors
ping to account for the difference between the input gamut and
on the halftone image is D = {g1 , · · · , g }. The marginal
output gamut. After that, the mapped image x [n] is halftoned
distribution
 of color gi on I [n] is Pr {I [n] = gi } = pi , and
and then encrypted by VC to generate the share images
i=1 pi = 1. Then the halftone image I [n] should satisfy s1 , · · · , sn . These share images are stacked in the encoder to
E (I [n]) = g, where E is the mathematical expectation. Moti-
get the target image ŷ [n]. This synthesis result is fed back
vated by this random process model, we give the following
to the digital halftoning process, so as to compensate for the
definition of size-invariant VC for grayscale secret image with
difference between y [n] and ŷ [n]. This can be formulated as
halftone/multitone shares (size-invariant grayscale multitone
an optimization problem.
VC, or SIGM-VC).
Let the mapping from y [n] to ŷ [n] be denoted as
Definition 1 ((k, n, g, c)-SIGM-VC): Let the set of colors/
ŷ [n] = S (y [n]). Due to the security constraint of the basic
grayscales of the secret image be C, and those used by the
VC algorithm, this mapping is stochastic. For example,
VC encoder be E. Define g to be the number of colors in C,
in the (2, 2)-threshold probabilistic VC [21], we have:
and define c to be the number of colors in E, i.e., g = |C|
Pr( ŷ [n] = 0 | y [n] = 0) = 1, and Pr( ŷ [n] = 0 | y [n] =
and c = |E|. Given two grayscale images, each having
1) = Pr( ŷ [n] = 1 | y [n] = 1) = 21 . In order to retain the
constant grayscales: J1 [n] = g1 and J2 [n] = g2 , and
security of the original binary VC, we keep the VC encryption
0 1≤ g1 < g21 ≤ 1. Each image is divided  into n shares:
algorithm intact and carefully change the input to the
s1 [n] , · · · , sn [n] , s12 [n] , · · · , sn2 [n] , and si ∈ E. If the
VC encryption, i.e., y [n]. By doing so, we intend to minimize
following two conditions are satisfied, then the secret sharing
the perceived difference between the target image ŷ [n] and
algorithm is called a grayscale multitone VC.
the original secret image x [n] (after gamut mapping). So we
1) Contrast Condition: Let i 1 , · · · , i k be k participants, then
have the following stochastic optimization problem:
the stacking of the k shares


ik min [w ⊗ (S (y) − x) [n]]2 , (4)
y
ŷ [n]  si [n] ,  = 1, 2, (2) ∀n
i=i1 where ⊗ denotes convolution and w is the filter model of HVS,
    such as the alpha stable model [22]. Note that the problem
satisfies E ŷ1 [n] < E ŷ2 [n] .
2) Security Condition: Let i 1 , · · · , i d be d participants and in (4) is different from the ordinary halftoning. In ordinary
d < k, then, ∀n, the following two random vectors are halftoning, one intends to minimize
 the perceived difference
equivalent: between y and x, i.e., min ∀n (w ⊗ (y − x) [n])2 , which
 T  T is a deterministic optimization problem. Note also that our
f1 = si11 [n] , · · · , si1d [n] , f2 = si21 [n] , · · · , si2d [n] , formulation is different from the halftone watermarking model
in [23] where the security condition in VC is not considered.
(3)
As with ordinary halftoning, one can elaborate on a
i.e., they have the same sample space and probability dis- DBS algorithm to solve this stochastic optimization prob-
tribution, and are independent of n. Equivalently, given the lem. But DBS is computationally expensive. A good balance
YAN et al.: IMPROVING THE VISUAL QUALITY OF SIZE-INVARIANT VC FOR GRAYSCALE IMAGES: AbS APPROACH 899

Fig. 3. The structure of AbS-based probabilistic VC system.

between performance and complexity is the error diffusion Algorithm 1 (n, n)-AbSProb: AbS-Based Probabilistic
algorithm. So we focus on error diffusion-based solution to the VC for Grayscale Images
problem in (4). The block diagram is shown in Fig. 3. In this
framework, the HVS model w is implicitly incorporated into
the diffusion filter and error diffusion model.

III. A B S-BASED P ROBABILISTIC VC

In this section, we combine the AbS framework with
a (n, n)-threshold probabilistic VC. Both the probabilistic
VC and the random grid VC are pixel based, i.e., each pixel is
encrypted independently. The layout and performance of the
algorithm for AbS-based random grid are quite similar to those
of the algorithm for AbS-based probabilistic VC, which can
be explained by the equivalence between probabilistic VC and
RG VC established by Yang et al. [21]. So AbS-based random
grid is not discussed as a separate scheme.
The probabilistic VC utilizes the basic matrices from the
deterministic VC [6], [7]. Instead of assigning all of the
permuted columns of the basic matrix to the shares, only
one column is selected randomly and assigned to one pixel
on each share. It is proved by Wang et al. [24] that for
each deterministic grayscale VC, there exists a corresponding
probabilistic VC with flexible size expansion which can be as
small as 1.

A. Overall Structure
The structure of the AbS-based probabilistic VC is
shown in Fig.3. The corresponding algorithm is summarized
in Algorithm 1. Construction of the basic matrices for
(n, n)-threshold VC can be found from [6], [7]. In this work,
we use the construction from [7], resulting in average contrast
of 1/2n−1 .
1) Gamut Mapping: The Gamut Mapping step is to ensure
that the system is stable in BIBS (bounded input bounded
state) sense, i.e., to ensure that the error e [n] is bounded.
To achieve this, the dynamic range of the input should be
bounded by the convex hull of the colors at the output of the
loop [23], [25]. Let the dynamic range of the input image J [n]
be [ Jmin , Jmax ], and the set of colors on the target image
be D = {β1 , · · · , βt : β1 < · · · < βt }. Then the convex hull
of the output color is simply [β1 , βt ]. A gamut mapping
G : [ Jmin , Jmax ] → [β1 , βt ] is needed to limit the dynamic
range of the input to the error diffusion loop. We consider
two gamut mappings: an affine mapping G A and a special
nonlinear mapping G N .
The affine mapping G A can retain the relative contrast
between adjacent gray levels. In addition, its parameters are
easier to determine than nonlinear mappings. Let G A be
G A : x = k J + b, (5)
then the parameters k and b can be determined as:
βt − β1 β1 Jmax − βt Jmin
k= , b= . (6)
Jmax − Jmin Jmax − Jmin
If the original secret image is of bad contrast due to
bad illumination during image acquisition, then histogram
equalization may be needed to enhance the details. So the
nonlinear gamut mapping G N considered here is an affine
mapping combined with histogram equalization. Let the his-
togram of the original secret image be p( j ) with its support
on [ Jmin , Jmax ]. Then, after the affine transformation
 z =
k J + b, the histogram of z is pz (z) = p z−bk with its support
on [β1 , βt ]. Finally, after equalization G E : z → x,
900 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON IMAGE PROCESSING, VOL. 28, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2019

we have Proof: Referring to the symbols in Fig. 3, we show that


the security condition and the contrast condition as defined by
z ζ −b
x = β1 + (βt − β1 ) p dζ. (7)
β1 k Security condition: Suppose d < n and let C0d and C1d
So the nonlinear gamut mapping G N can be written as a
composition of two operators: G N = G E ◦ G A .
Unfortunately, for probabilistic and RG VC, the output
color is not deterministic. For example, for (2, 2)-threshold
 VC, even though D = {0, 1}, but on the target
probabilistic
image Pr ŷ [n] = 1|y [n] = 1 = 12 . Thus on average, a white
pixel y [n] only has 50% chance to be reproduced exactly
by the decoder, resulting in an average light transmittance
of 12 . So the output gamut cannot be set as [0, 1]. Fortunately,
from the stability analysis of error diffusion loop [25], when
the average intensity of the input is slightly outside of the
output gamut, the damage to the image is small and local.
So in this case, we can set β1 = E{ ŷ [n] |y [n] = 0}; and
βt = ρ · E{ ŷ [n] |y [n] = 1}, where the parameter 0 < ρ ≤ 1
is used to control the upper bound of the input gamut. With
the decrease of ρ, the probability of out-gamut-pixel becomes
smaller, but the dynamic range of the target image ŷ [n]
also decreases. Therefore, there is a tradeoff in selecting ρ.
From our experiments, we found that setting ρ = 1 produces
satisfactory result while keeping the global dynamic range as
high as possible.
2) Diffusion Kernel: The error diffusion kernel h [n] can
be any stable blue noise diffusion kernel, such as the Floyd
and Steinberg’s kernel [26], the Jarvis’ kernel [27], or the
Stucki’s kernel [28]. Although the diffusion kernel can also
be optimized or made adaptive, this issue is out of the scope
of the current paper.
B. Theoretical Validation
We show that Algorithm 1 is a valid construction of
(n, n, g, 2)-SIGM-VC. The proof of this result hinges on
the contrast property and the security property of the basic
(n, n)-ProbVC [7]. We summarize them as a Lemma.
Lemma 1: Let the set C0 (C1 resp.) contains all the column
vectors from the basic matric B0 (B1 resp.) in deterministic
VC [1]. When sharing a black (white resp.) pixel, the encoder
randomly choose one vector from C0 (C1 resp.), and ran-
domly permute the rows, then assign one row to each share.
Then, the (n, n)-ProbVC scheme in [7] satisfies the follow-
ing contrast and security conditions. i) Contrast condition:
Stacking
 all the n shares,  the stacking  result ŷ [n] satisfies
 linear correlation term, and is assumed to be independent of
Pr ŷ [n] = 1|y [n] = 1 ≥ pTH , Pr ŷ [n] = 1|y [n] = 0 ≤
pTH − α, where pTH  is a threshold
 and α > 0. ii) Security
condition: ∀ subset i 1 , · · · , i q ⊂ {1, 2, · · · , n} with q < n,
the two sets obtained by restricting each vector in C0 and C1
to the rows i 1 , · · · , i q , contain the same vectors with the same
frequencies.
Proof: The proof of Lemma 1 can be found in [7].
Furthermore, The pixels on one share are independent of each
other, due to the randomization in ProbVC encoding.
Theorem 1: The construction of (n, n)-AbSProb algorithm
in Algorithm 1 is a valid (n, n, g, 2)-SIGM-VC.
Definition 1 are satisfied.
be two sets of vectors by restricting the vectors in C0 and
C1 to the i 1 , · · · , i d rows, respectively. Then from the secu-
rity condition of (n, n)-ProbVC, the two sets C0d and C1d
contain the same vectors with the same frequencies. So this
security condition can ensure perfect secrecy as defined by
Shannon [29], i.e., no information about y [n] can be
derived
 from the  d shares. For simplicity, let sd 
si1 [n] , · · · , sid [n] , then we have
Pr {y [n]} = Pr {y [n] | sd } . (8)
Note that x [n] → y [n] → sd form a Markov chain, hence
sd → y [n] → x [n] is also a Markov chain. So, if given any
d shares, the a posteriori probability of x [n] is
Pr {x [n] | sd } = Pr {x [n] , y [n] | sd }
y[n]∈E
= Pr {y [n] | sd } Pr {x [n] | sd , y [n]} (9)
y[n]∈E
= Pr {y [n]} Pr {x [n] | y [n]} (10)
y[n]∈E
= Pr {x [n]} .
From (9) to (10), we use the result in (8) and the one-step
dependence property of the Markov chain. So we conclude
that, if the probabilistic VC is perfectly secure, then our
AbS-based probabilistic VC is also perfectly secure, i.e., given
any d < n shares, no additional information of x [n] can be
derived.
Furthermore, even though y [n] may have spatial depen-
dency, the pixels on one share are independent of each other
from the property of the basic ProbVC.
Contrast Condition: To show  the  contrast condition in
Definition 1, we need to find E ŷ [n] . For this purpose, a sta-
tistical model for the binary quantizer is needed. For binary
quantizer, the quantization error y [n] − x̂ [n] is correlated
with the input x̂ [n]. A linear model y [n] = γ x̂ [n] + q [n]
can characterize this dependency [30]. The coefficient γ can
be determined by least square fitting between the model
and the quantizer input/output data [31]. For natural image,
γ may vary from image to image. For constant input image,
γ also depends on the input level g. The term q [n] is the
part of the quantizer error that cannot be described by the
the input x̂ [n]. Based on this quantizer model, a simplified
and equivalent block diagram for Fig. 3 is derived, as shown
in Fig. 4.
When n shares are stacked, the combined effect of
VC encryption and simulated stacking in Fig. 3 can be
modelled as a probabilistic non-symmetric binary channel.
Here we only need E( ŷ [n]). From the contrast condition of
the (n, n)-ProbVC, we have E( ŷ [n]) = κ · E(y [n]), where
κ = 2n−11
(See [7, Th. 3]). This implies that, if we focus on
the expected value of all the signals, then the equivalent system
is linear time invariant (LTI).
YAN et al.: IMPROVING THE VISUAL QUALITY OF SIZE-INVARIANT VC FOR GRAYSCALE IMAGES: AbS APPROACH
 
Fig. 4. Equivalent block diagram for analysis of E ŷ [n] .
For the equivalent LTI system, we can find the transfer func-
tions for the signal x [n] and the noise q [n], respectively [31].
For clarity, we use subscript E to denote the expected value
of a random variable, and use upper case letter for the
corresponding Z-transform. For example, x E [n]  E {x [n]},
and X E (z)  Z {x E [n]}.
Let γs and γq be the γ for signal path and noise path,
respectively. Then, for signal path, we have
E E (z) = (1 − γs κ) X̂ E (z),
X̂ E (z) = X E (z) + H (z)E E(z),
ŶE (z) = γs κ X̂ E (z).
So, the signal transfer function (STF) is
γs κ
Hs (z) = , (14)
1 + (γs κ − 1) H (z)
where H (z) is the Z-transform of the error diffusion filter.
Similarly, we can find the noise transfer function (NTF) Hn (z).
So the output is:
γs κ
ŶE (z) = X E (z)
1 + (γs κ − 1) H (z)
  
STF
κ (1 − H (z))
+   Q E (z). (15)
1 + γq κ − 1 H (z)
   to which the HVS is sensitive. So if the testing image is a
NTF
Note that the error diffusion filter is low-pass with unit
DC gain, so it is easy to verify that the STF is low-pass with
unit DC gain, and the NTF is high-pass  with zero DC gain.
Hence, if the input x [n] = g, then E ŷ [n] = g.
Note that E (q [n]) can be nonzero. Since the noise transfer
function (NTF) between ŷ [n] and q [n] is high-pass, this
nonzero mean value is suppressed by the loop. Hence it doesn’t
affect the mean value of the output ŷ [n].
So, we have shown that the average value of the stacking
result ŷ [n] is equal to the input gray level. If we have two
constant images x 1 [n]= g1 and x 2[n] =g2 with g1 < g2 ,
then it follows that E ŷ1 [n] < E ŷ2 [n] . So, the contrast
condition is satisfied.
C. Quality Metrics for Target Image
In this subsection, we first briefly discuss the blue noise
property that quantifies the perceptual quality of the target
image. Then we design a new metric, the residual variance,
to measure the residual noise power within the band of HVS
and introduce two fidelity metrics between the original secret
image and the target image.
901
The perceptual quality of halftone image is related to the
spectral properties of the point process for the halftone dots.
To characterize the spectral properties, several constant images
are usually halftoned by the halftoning algorithms, then the
spectral measures, such as RAPSD, are calculated on the
halftone image. The proposed residual variance can be thought
of as a measure of the noise power in low frequency bands
that the HVS is most sensitive to.
1) Blue Noise and Its Spectral Characterization: A dither
pattern from halftoning can be modeled as a spatial random
point process, where the spectral feature of this model corre-
lates closely with its perceptual quality. To produce visually
pleasing dither patterns, the minority pixels must be scattered
as far as possible from each other. This requirement is reflected
as blue noise (or high frequency noise) on the spectrum [22].
From the 2D spatial point process, it is not difficult to
estimate the power spectrum density (PSD) P̂ (f), where
f is two-dimensional frequency [22]. By partitioning the
2D frequency domain into a series of annular rings,
(11) we can get two convenient 1D statistics: RAPSD P( fρ ) and
(12) anisotropy A( f ρ ). Let the radius and the width of the annular
(13) ring R( f ρ ) be fρ and ρ respectively, then the RAPSD is:
1
P( fρ ) =   P̂(f), (16)
 R( f ρ )
∀f∈R( f ρ )
 
where  R( fρ ) denotes the number of elements in the
set R( f ρ ). For visually pleasing blue noise pattern, the
RAPSD has zero low-frequency component, and a peak
at the principal frequency, followed by flat high frequency
region [32].
2) Residual Variance: For most sample-based VC, such
as probabilistic VC and RG, the target image is not a blue
noise pattern. Hence after processing by the HVS model,
a significant amount of noise is left within the frequency band
constant image, then we propose to use the residual noise
power after applying the HVS as a measure of perceptual
quality. We call this the residual variance. Residual variance
measures the power of the noise within the band of HVS.
Let the target image be ŷ [n], and the HVS be simply
modeled as a Gaussian lowpass filter G σ [n] with standard
deviation σ . Then the noise that is ‘visible’ to the HVS is
ȳ [n] = ŷ [n] ⊗ G σ [n]. So the residual variance is calculated
as
V R = Var ( ȳ [n]) = E ( ȳ [n] − E ( ȳ [n]))2 . (17)
Obviously, if ŷ [n] is a blue noise pattern, then ȳ [n] is close
to zero. So the smaller the V R , the better perceptual quality.
Compared to RAPSD, the residual variance is a summary of
the quality for each gray level. So a 2D plot of the residual
variance can help us to explore the qualities for all possible
gray levels, while RAPSD needs 3D plotting.
To validate the RV as a quality measure, we perform a small
scale subjective test. Thirty persons with normal vision and
ages between 22 to 45 are involved in the experiment. Each
person is asked to evaluate 50 printed target images according
to a five-scale scoring [33]. The target images are generated
902
Fig. 5. Scatter plot of residual variance against MOS.
using the algorithm in [7], where the secret image is a constant
image with integer intensity randomly chosen from [0, 255].
The target images are of size 512 × 512 and are printed with
600 dpi by a Pantum P3000 Laser printer. Finally, the mean
opinion score (MOS) from the thirty persons are calculated.
The result is reported in Fig. 5, which shows close correlation
between RV and MOS. The Pearson’s correlation coefficient
is -0.9715.
In all our experiments, the standard deviation of the
Gaussian filter is σ = 2, so a 13 × 13 square neighborhood
should be chosen in order to cover the ±3σ range [20].
The residual variance is calculated as sample variance of the
filtered image.
3) Fidelity Measures: The fidelity between the target image
and the original grayscale image is characterized by tone
similarity and structural similarity. The tone similarity is mea-
sured by Human Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratio (HPSNR) [20],
which is the PSNR between two smoothed images using the
lowpass filter model of the HVS. To calculate the HPSNR,
both the original image and the target image are smoothed
by a Gaussian filter w [n]. Then PSNR is calculated between
these two smoothed images.
The structure similarity is measured by Mean Structure
Similarity (MSSIM) [34]. This metric combines the local
luminance comparison, local contrast comparison and local
correlation between two images into one metric [34]. It is
calculated between the smoothed original image and the
smoothed target image, using the same Gaussian filter as
calculating the residual variance and HPSNR.
D. Experimental Results
In this section, we compare the proposed algorithm with
typical probabilistic VCs reported in recent papers.
1) Reference Algorithms: Since the purpose of the this
work is improving the visual quality of the target image for
grayscale secret image, the reference algorithms should be
limited to the ones addressing the same problem. More specifi-
cally, the reference algorithms in this section and section IV-B
should be limited to: (1) The secret image is a grayscale
image. So we exclude algorithms designed for binary secret
image (such as binary logo, binary cartoon image) or simply
thresholded grayscale images from comparison. (2) The goal
is to improve the visual quality of the target image, not
the quality of the share images. So we exclude algorithms
related to extended VC from comparison, such as [10], [11],
and [35]–[38].
Two algorithms are chosen to compare with. The first
one is the application of Yang’s probabilistic VC to halftone
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON IMAGE PROCESSING, VOL. 28, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2019
Fig. 6. Stacking results for probabilistic VC. Each column corresponds
to one algorithm and each row corresponds to one gray level. From left to
right, Yang [7], Wang et al. [24], AbS and error diffusion-based halftoning
of J [n] /2. From top to bottom, gray level g = 18 , 14 , 21 , 34 , 78 .
image [7]. The second one is a recent algorithm constructed by
Wang et al. [24], which operates directly on grayscale image
and halftoning is not needed. For fair comparison, the pixel
expansion is set to 1 in Wang’s algorithm [24].
2) Visual Quality of the Target Image: First, we per-
form experiments to explore the spectral properties of the
AbS-based approach. As is usually done in testing halftoning
algorithms, several constant images J [n] = g are used as

input. We choose g ∈ 18 , 14 , 21 , 43 , 78 . Using each constant
image as the secret image, share images are generated and
then stacked to obtain the target image ŷ [n]. Then the RAPSD
and the residual variance are calculated to characterize the
perceptual quality of ŷ [n].
Fig. 6 shows a sample of the stacking results. The results
for Yang’s algorithm [7], Wang’s algorithm [24] and the
proposed AbS-based algorithm are in the first, second and the
third columns. The halftoning result (from error diffusion
without VC) for J [n] /2 is shown in the last column, which
serves as reference. Using J [n] /2 instead of J [n] is because
that the output range of the three algorithms are all decreased
to 1/2 of the input range. Each sample image is of size
128 × 128. Visual inspection reveals that the AbS algorithm
produces better and visually pleasing results than Yang’s
and Wang’s algorithms. Less clusters of minority pixels are
observed in AbS than in the other two. When Yang’s algorithm
and Wang’s algorithm are compared, the minority dots are
more evenly distributed in Yang’s algorithm. This is under-
standable since Yang’s algorithm is applied to halftone image,
where the minority dots are already distributed evenly by
halftoning before VC encoding. On the other hand, halftoning
and dot distribution are not considered in Wang’s algorithm.
As g increases to be above 12 , the performances of all three
algorithms deteriorate. For Yang’s algorithm, more clusters
appear. The reason is that, VC can reproduce black pixels
exactly but only partially reproduce the white pixels. So when
g is small, black pixels dominate and white pixels are scattered
evenly. In this case, even though half of the white pixels are
YAN et al.: IMPROVING THE VISUAL QUALITY OF SIZE-INVARIANT VC FOR GRAYSCALE IMAGES: AbS APPROACH
Fig. 7. RAPSD for probabilistic VC. Each row corresponds to one gray
level. From top to bottom, gray level g = 18 , 14 , 21 , 34 , 78 . The symbol 
indicates the blue noise principal frequency. Blue dashed line: RAPSD of
halftone image for J [n] /2 = g/2 from error diffusion. (a) Yang 2004 [7].
(b) Wang et al. [24] 2011. (c) AbS.
randomly flipped to black pixels, the minority white pixels
are still scattered apart, thus producing near blue noise effect.
However, as g increases to be above 12 , white pixels dominate
and black pixels become the minority ones. When half of these
white pixels are flipped by VC encoding and stacking, these
flips are random. Hence, clusters of black pixels appear on
the target image. The same trend is observed from the AbS
result. As g increases to be above 12 , the chance that input
is outside of the output gamut increases. However, AbS still
produces better perceptual quality than Yang’s algorithm, when
observed from sufficient distance. The superior performance of
AbS can also be verified by RAPSD and residual variance.
In Fig. 7, the blue dash-dot curve is the RAPSD for halftone
image from error diffusion, which is plotted as a reference. The
principal frequency is indicated by  on the horizontal axes.
A visually pleasing blue noise pattern should distribute most
of its power above the principal frequency, so that the noise
power within the frequency band of the HVS is small.
First, the proposed AbS approach produces almost zero
DC component, especially for small g. This is due to the
feedback loop in AbS approach, where the combined noise
from quantization, VC encoding and stacking is pushed to high
frequency band. Also we note that the periodic pattern, known
as ‘banding effect’ in error diffusion-based halftoning, does
not appear. This can be explained by the random noise injected
by VC encoding and stacking into the diffusion loop. This
random noise breaks the annoying periodic pattern. Second,
we note that the noise in Wang’s algorithm (middle column
of Fig. 7) is white noise, containing all the frequency contents
with comparable magnitude. This can be explained from the
cluster of dots from Wang’s result in Fig. 6. In addition, Yang’s
method has lower magnitude than Wang’s method in low
frequency, but still significantly larger than the AbS approach.
In terms of residual variance, the results for (2, 2)-threshold
and (3, 3)-threshold algorithms are compared in Fig. 8(a)
and Fig. 8(b) respectively. Obviously, the halftone image
from error diffusion has the lowest residual variance due to
the blue noise property of error diffusion. Among the three
algorithms, the residual variance from AbS is the smallest.
Wang’s algorithm has the largest residual variance since its
PSD is the largest in low frequency band. The residual variance
903
Fig. 8. Comparison of residual variance for various probabilistic VC:
Yang [7], Wang et al. [24], AbS and error diffusion-based halftoning.
(a) (2, 2)-threshold algorithms. (b) (3, 3)-threshold algorithms.
from Yang’s algorithm is lower than Wang’s algorithm for
most g. For the proposed AbS-based approach, the residual
variance is small when g < 150. When g > 150, the residual
variance increases significantly due to the increased probability
of the out of gamut pixels, but it still lower than that of Yang’s
algorithm. The result of residual variance is consistent with the
RAPSD result in low frequency band.
In summary, the perceptual quality of the proposed AbS
probabilistic VC is superior to the raw VC algorithms in
this experiment. This is verified by subjective evaluation of
sample images, RAPSD and the residual variance. In addition,
the result of residual variance is convenient to show when
comparing different algorithms and different gray levels.
Even though the AbS algorithm is designed for halftone
image, it works for simple binary pattern or thresholded
grayscale secret image as well. However, unlike the algorithm
in [39] where same quality is ensured for black region and
white region, the AbS algorithm reproduces the dark region
with a better quality than the white region. This can be
explained from the residual variance in Fig. 8. It is important
to note that the algorithm in [39] is not secure, while the AbS
algorithm offers full security.
3) Test of Fidelity: The above experiments are carried out on
images with constant intensities, which aims to understand the
perceptual quality of the proposed AbS method. Next, we test
the fidelity of the AbS method on natural images, including a
test on a sample image and a test on an image database.
The test result on the Lena image is shown in Fig. 9,
including the original Lena image, the shares and the target
images. In Fig. 10, we compare the result with reference
algorithms. The AbS approach produces the result with better
fidelity than Yang’s and Wang’s algorithms. As can be seen
from Fig. 10(c), the quality of darker areas is better than that of
the brighter area, which is consistent with the residual variance
plot in Fig. 8.
In the batch test, we use a set of 24 images from the Kodak
database, as shown in Fig. 11. The images are converted
to their grayscale counterparts before testing. The metrics
HPSNR and MSSIM are used to measure the fidelity of the
target images. For the three algorithms, their output range
1
decreases to 2n−1 of the input dynamic range. So the original
1
secret image should be multiplied by 2n−1 to obtain the
reference image.
The testing results for quality metrics are shown in Fig. 12.
The AbS approach significantly outperforms Yang’s algorithm
904
Fig. 9. The result of AbS-based probabilistic VC on the Lena image.
(a) The original image. (b) Share 1. (c) Share 2. (d) The target image.
Fig. 10. Comparison of probabilistic VC on Lena image. (a) Yang [7],
(b) Wang et al. [24], (c) AbS, and (d) Halftone.
Fig. 11. The set of testing images from the Kodak database. The indices
of the images are from 1 to 24, starting from the left to the right and from
the top to the bottom. These images are converted to grayscale before the
VC encryption. The original size of the images are 768 × 512 or 512 × 768.
and Wang’s algorithm, both in HPSNR and MSSIM. It is
interesting to observe that the results of the three algorithms
also show strong correlation on a given image, indicating that
the content of the image influences the performance of the
three algorithms.
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON IMAGE PROCESSING, VOL. 28, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2019
Fig. 12. Testing result of Yang’s algorithm [7], Wang’s algorithm [24], and
the AbS algorithm on the Kodak image database. (a) HPSNR, (b) MSSIM.
Note that on each test image, the AbS probabilistic VC pro-
duces the highest HPSNR and MSSIM among the three
algorithms, even though the metrics vary from image to image.
To better understand this variation, it is helpful to figure out
how the content of the image influences the performance
metrics. The performance on image No. 20 (the plane image)
is worse than others, both in terms of HPSNR and MSSIM.
This is due to the large white areas (the sky) in the image,
since white pixels are only partially reproduced. This result
is also consistent with the residual variance in Fig. 8. As the
brightness of the image increases, residual noise with larger
power is left within the band of high HVS sensitivity. Hence
the fidelity between the original secret image and the target
image is lower. It is also observed that the complexity of the
content also influences the performance metrics.
4) Analysis of Complexity: First, we note that the time
complexities of the three algorithms are linear in the size
of the secret image, i.e., the time complexity is O (M N).1
Let the complexity of random integer generation be denoted
as Crnd . For Wang’s algorithm [24], at each pixel location, only
a random integer between 0 and 255 needs to be generated.
So the time complexity is M NCrnd . For Yang’s algorithm [7],
at each pixel location, in addition to random integer genera-
tion, the quantization error is calculated and pushed forward
to four neighboring pixels. This requires 4M N multiplications
and 5M N additions/subtractions. So the time complexity is
roughly 4M NCmul + 5M NCadd + M NCrnd . For the proposed
AbS algorithm, the linear gamut mapping needs M N multipli-
cations, and the simulated stacking needs M N multiplications,
so the time complexity is 6M NCmul + 5M NCadd + M NCrnd .
So for time complexity, Wang’s algorithm is the lowest and
the proposed AbS algorithm is the highest. When compared
to Yang’s algorithm, AbS needs only two additional multipli-
cations for each pixel. The actual machine times for Yang’s
algorithm and the AbS algorithm are quite close. For example,
for the Lena image, the running time for Yang’s algorithm is
3.02 seconds and the running time for AbS is 3.19 seconds,
when tested in Matlab 2016a on a desktop computer with an
Intel i5 CPU (running at 3.10 GHz) and 20 GB memory.
From the experiments, we observe that the quality of target
image deteriorates with the increase of gray level. As the
gray level increases, the quantizer produces more white pixels.
In a small neighborhood such as a 2 × 2 block, if all the
pixels are white and all of them are flipped to be black on
1 An algorithm has a time complexity O(M N ), if there exists a positive
number c such that the complexity is upper bounded by cM N .
YAN et al.: IMPROVING THE VISUAL QUALITY OF SIZE-INVARIANT VC FOR GRAYSCALE IMAGES: AbS APPROACH 905

Fig. 13. The structure of AbS-based vector VC system.
the target image, then this produces a cluster of black pixels,
and the feedback loop forces the quantizer to produce more
white pixels. Hence we also see cluster of white pixels on
the target image. These clusters are the source of bad visual
quality. To avoid the cluster of pixels on the target image,
we should guarantee a certain amount of white pixels within
a block on the target image. This can be accomplished by
vector VC. So, in next section, we extend our AbS based
probabilistic VC to AbS-based vector VC.
IV. A B S-BASED V ECTOR VC
As shown in section III, for probabilistic VC, the major
quality degradation comes from the out-of-gamut pixels. This
problem can be remedied by vector VC where each image
block of size B × B is encoded.
A. Overall Structure
The overall block diagram of AbS-based vector VC is
n
of the n share vectors is the target vector ŷ = si , where
 i=1
a b denotes element-wise product between two vectors,
i.e., the Hadamard product. If the following two conditions
are satisfied, we call it a (n, n, m) Vector VC.
m
a) Contrast condition: Let B(y) = k=1 yi be the
brightness of the vector y, and y1 and y2 be two vectors such
that B (y1 ) < B(y2), then  the
 corresponding target vectors
should satisfy B ŷ1 ≤ B ŷ2 .  
b) Security condition: Let sd  si1 , · · · , sid be any
d share vectors with d < n, then no information can be derived
from sd about y, i.e., Pr {y} = Pr {y | sd }.
Remark
 2: The
 contrast condition
  only
  requires that
B ŷ1 ≤ B ŷ2 , instead of B ŷ1 < B ŷ2 . The security
condition is the same as ordinary VC, which requires perfect
secrecy if given only d < n shares.
Next, we give a construction of (n, n, m) vector VC that
satisfies the above definition. Let E be the set of brightness
of the vectors in E: E  {B (y) , ∀y ∈ E}. And   let
 D be the 
set of brightness of the vectors in D: D  B ŷ , ∀ŷ ∈ D .
The essence of designing the vector VC is the design of
a non-invertible mapping M from E to D. This mapping
is realized by using different basic matrices for different
values in D. The basic matrices can be designed using
Algorithm 2.
Algorithm 2 is based on construction 2 in [1]. Let
ai be the -th row of the basic matrix Ai constructed using
this construction, then the brightnesses of  nthe vectors
 from
stacking
 all
 the rows should satisfy: B  a
=1 
0 = 0 and

shown in Fig. 13. After the gamut mapping G, the input B n=1 a1  = 1. Then, it is straightforward to show that
grayscale image x [n] is divided into non-overlapping blocks. B n=1 bi = i , where bi is the -th row of the basic
The pixels in each block are organized into a vector x [n]. The matrix Bi .
modified vector x̂ [n] is quantized by a vector quantizer QE , For example, taking m = 4 and D = {2, 1, 0}, we get
where E is the codebook of the vector quantizer. The quantized    
1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0
vector y [n] ∈ E is encoded by vector VC. Then, the gen- B0 = B1 = ,
0 1 0 1 0 1 1 0
erated share vectors s1 [n] , · · · , sn [n] are superimposed to  
1 0 1 0
synthesize the target image ŷ [n]. The discrepancy e [n] = B2 = . (18)
1 0 1 0
x̂ [n]− ŷ [n] is calculated and diffused to adjacent blocks, using
a vector error diffusion filter H [n]. For (3,3)-threshold and m = 4, we have
The design of gamut mapping G, the vector quan- ⎡ ⎤ ⎡ ⎤
1 1 0 0 1 1 0 0
tizer QE and the diffusion filter H [n] depends on the vector
B0 = ⎣ 1 0 1 0 ⎦, B1 = ⎣ 1 0 1 0 ⎦, (19)
VC encoder, so we describe it first.
0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1
1) Vector VC: The input into the vector VC is a binary
vector y [n] ∈ Zm×1 2 , where m = B 2 is the number of pixels but now D = {1, 0}. We will focus on (2, 2)-threshold vector
in a block, and Z2  {0, 1}. For simplicity, we drop the time VC in the following discussion.
index n for a moment and focus on one block/vector. Next Next we need to determine the mapping M : E → D.
we define the vector VC. Recall that E is the codebook of the Recall that E = {0, 1, · · · , m}. Using the basic matrices Bi
quantizer and hence is also the codebook of the VC encoder. from Algorithm 2, we have D = {0, · · · , |D| − 1}. To make
Besides, we defined D to be the codebook of the VC decoder, full use of the output range of brightness, let 0 → 0, m →
i.e., the set of vectors on the target image. In general D ⊂ E |D| − 1. The mapping of other elements should be evenly
due to the security condition. So the mapping E → D distributed in D and meet the following restriction: if x < y,
is inevitably a many-to-one mapping, which is similar to a then M (x) ≤ M (y). For example, for m = 4 and n = 2,
stochastic quantizer. However, considering that this loss of we can use the mapping as shown in Table I.
contrast can be compensated by error diffusion loop, and that It is not difficult to verify the contrast condition from the
the security condition should be faithfully fulfilled, we relax construction of the mapping M. Furthermore, the rows of
the contrast condition in the definition. Bi are indistinguishable after random column permutation,
Definition 2: A (n, n, m) vector VC encodes a vector y ∈ so from only one row, one cannot infer which Bi is used.
Zm×1
2 into n share vectors s1 , · · · , sn ∈ Zm×1
2 . The stacking Hence the security condition in Definition 2 is satisfied.
906
Algorithm 2 Design Basic Matrices for (n, n, m) Vector VC
TABLE I
M APPING AND BASIC M ATRICES FOR V ECTOR VC W ITH m = 4 AND n = 2
Fig. 14. Intra-block error diffusion in the vector quantizer. The shaded blocks
correspond to quantized pixels.
2) Gamut Mapping: From the construction of the vector
VC algorithm, one can determine the gamut mapping. For
example, for the (2, 2, 4) vector VC, the mapping between the  vec(X̂) = vec(X) + ê = vec(X) + H · e,
block brightness of y and ŷ is: {0, 1, · · · , m} → 0, · · · , m2 .
So in a local B × B block, the dynamic range is halved.
For each pixel, the average output gamut is [0, 12 ]. This
suggests using the affine gamut mapping G A : x [n] = 12 J [n].
The nonlinear gamut mapping G N = G E ◦ G A is also valid
here.
 Quantizer: The vector quantizer ŷ [n] =
3) Vector
QE x̂ [n] is realized by a combination of scalar quantizers
and intra-block error diffusion. Even though the codebook E
can be optimized, it is not pursued here [40]. The pixels in a
block are processed in raster scanning order. At each pixel
location n, the intensity x̂ [n] is quantized using a simple
two level quantizer, with the threshold setting to 21 . Then the
quantization error is diffused to other pixels in the block using
the ordinary Floyd and Steinberg’s kernel. The purpose of this
error diffusion is to let the average of the quantizer output to
approximate the average of the input block.
For example, referring to Fig. 14, given a 2 × 2 block of
secret image x [n], the vector quantizer outputs a binary 2 × 2
block as follows. First, the pixel x̂[nr , n c ] is quantized and the
quantization error δ[nr , n c ] = x̂[nr , n c ] − y[nr , n c ] is diffused
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON IMAGE PROCESSING, VOL. 28, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2019
Fig. 15. Vector error diffusion process. The shaded block is the current
block.
to the remaining three un-quantized pixels:
7
x̂[nr , n c + 1] = x̂[nr , n c + 1] + δ[nr , n c ]
16
1
x̂[nr + 1, n c + 1] = x̂[nr + 1, n c + 1] + δ[nr , n c ]
16
5
x̂[nr + 1, n c ] = x̂[nr + 1, n c ] + δ[nr , n c ]
16
Similarly, we then sequentially quantize x̂[nr , n c + 1] and
x̂[nr + 1, n c ], and diffuse the quantization errors to the
remaining un-quantized pixels.
4) Vector Error Diffusion: The purpose of vector error
diffusion is to let the average of the target image (from
simulated stacking) to approximate the average of the input
secret image. So it diffuses different errors than the error
diffusion in vector quantization. Vector error diffusion (VED)
diffuses the vector error e [n] to neighboring blocks. VED was
originally proposed by Venkata and Evans, in order to produce
dither pattern with varying dot density and dot size [41]. Here
we use a similar block neighbors, but a different diffusion
filter. The configuration of blocks is shown in Fig. 15.
Denote e as the error vector from the current block. Let each
column of X be the vectors x [n] from the four neighboring
blocks in Fig. 15, also following a raster scanning order. Then
the vector error diffusion can be represented as:
(20)
where H ∈ R4m×m is the vector error diffusion filter. The
operator vec(A) ∈ R4m×1 stacks the columns of A ∈ Rm×4 to
form a vector. The entries in H determines how each element
of e is distributed to pixels in the neighboring blocks. This
filter must be low pass in order to push the errors to high
frequency band. It also must ensure that all quantization errors
are diffused. So the entries of H must satisfy: h i, j > 0 and
4m  T
h
i=1 i, j = 1, ∀ j ∈ {1, · · · , m}. Let h  7 3 5 1
16 16 16 16
and Im be a m × m matrix with all elements equal to 1. Then
the Venkata
  and Evans’s vector error diffusion filter is H =
h ⊗ m1 Im , where ⊗ is the Kronecker product between two
matrices. This is equivalent to first distributing the total error
among blocks according to the Floyd-Steinberg’s diffusion,
and then distributing the allocated error evenly within each
block. Such even distribution within a block is advantageous
when one intends to produce clustered dots. In this work,
however, the intention is to produce scattered dots for better
visual quality. So a modified H is proposed.
The proposed diffusion process is illustrated in
Fig. 15(a)-(d). From it, the coefficients of the diffusion
YAN et al.: IMPROVING THE VISUAL QUALITY OF SIZE-INVARIANT VC FOR GRAYSCALE IMAGES: AbS APPROACH
filter can be derived. In fact, instead of producing an
explicit expression for H, one only needs to follow the steps
in Fig. 15 to push the errors forward. The pixels in the
current block are already quantized (after VQ, VC encoding
and stacking). The ‘quantization’ error is pushed forward to
their neighbors using the Floyd and Steinberg’s kernel. If the
error is diffused to another already quantized pixel, it will
not affect the quantization result at that position. Instead,
the error will be forwarded to other neighboring pixels. As
a result of the above error pushing, the error e is pushed to
seven pixels that are nearest to the current block. The other
nine pixels in the neighboring blocks are unchanged. The
entries of H are non-negative, since each coefficient from the
Floyd-Steinberg’s diffusion is non-negative. Furthermore, all
errors are diffused, as when the errors cannot be compensated
by the already quantized samples, they are forwarded to other
neighbors.
B. Experimental Result
1) Reference Algorithms: Three relevant algorithms are
implemented and compared with the proposed AbS-based
Vector VC. Here we briefly outline these algorithms.
The first algorithm is Hou’s block encoding algorithm [42],
which was also summarized in [8]. This algorithm works on
halftone image. The image blocks are classified according to
their blackness, i.e., the number of black pixels in it. So for a
block with m pixels, one gets m + 1 types of blocks Di , i =
0, 1, · · · , m. Let B0 and B1 represent the basic matrices for
black and white pixels in the basic deterministic VC [1]. When
encoding a type i block, the basic matrix B0 is utilized i times
and the basic matrix B1 is utilized m − i times. So in a ‘local’
neighborhood of m blocks (same type), the contrast between
black and white is maintained.
The second algorithm is Liu’s improvement to Hou’s algo-
rithm [8]. Liu’s algorithm uses the same halftoning, the same
block type and counter as in Hou’s algorithm, but the use
of B0 and B1 is probabilistic. Each block has chance to be
encoded by B0 or B1 , depending on the type of the block and
the number of B0 that has already been used for that type of
block.
Chen et al. use the histogram to guide the local map-
ping between the secret image block and the block on the
target image, which is later improved by Chen et al. [9],
Lee et al. [18]. We call these algorithms the histogram directed
mapping (HDM) algorithms.
2) Testing on Constant Images: First we explore the
 1 1 1 3 7 of the algorithms on constant images g ∈
performance
8 , 4 , 2 , 4 , 8 , and study the spatial and spectral properties.
The histogram directed mapping algorithms, i.e., Chen’s algo-
rithm and Lee’s algorithm, need the histogram that cannot be
provided by a constant image, so they are excluded from the
current experiments. We will test them on natural images later.
The target images from Hou’s algorithm, Liu’s algorithm
and the proposed AbS vector VC are shown in Fig. 16.
First, from the first column, we observe the periodic patterns
produced by Hou’s algorithms. Moreover, when there are
periodic patterns on the halftone image (see last column),
there will be periodic patterns on the target image. This is
907
Fig. 16. The target images. Each column corresponds to one algorithm.
From left to right: Hou’s algorithm [42], Liu’s algorithm [8], AbS Vector
VC algorithm, and halftone result using error diffusion. Each row corresponds
to one gray level. From top to bottom, g = 18 , 14 , 12 , 34 , 78 . The halftone
image of 12 g serves as a reference since the first two algorithms are applied
to halftone image.
due to the fact that for a type-i block with i black pixels,
Hou’s algorithm uses B0 for the first i type-i blocks. This
deterministic rule maps the periodic patterns in the halftone
image into the periodic patterns on the target image. Also
one may notice that, along the vertical directions, the dots
are clustered into a band, hence may introduce low frequency
components on the spectrum and RAPSD. Second, from
the second column, we observe that the periodic patterns
are broken since Liu’s algorithm allows each pixel to have
chance to use B0 and B1 , in a probabilistic manner. Last,
from the third column, we observe that the target image from
the proposed AbS vector VC algorithm produces much better
visual quality: minority dots are spread apart. This is due to
the vector error diffusion loop in AbS vector VC which pushes
the error to high frequency band.
The target image for g = 18 from AbS (the first row and third
column in Fig. 16) contains slightly noticeable line artifacts at
top portion. The reason is that, the AbS algorithm uses raster
scanning order, starting from the top-left corner and ending
at the bottom-right corner. At the beginning of the scanning
(the top), when g is small, the vector quantizer produces blocks
with either no white pixel, or just one white pixel. According
to Table I, these two types of blocks are mapped to all-black
blocks on the target image. This mapping has two effects. First,
it delays the appearance of white pixels on the target image,
when compared to pure halftone result in the last column of
Fig. 16. Second, the error between the secret block and the
target block will be accumulated till it is large enough such
that the vector quanziter produces at least two white pixels in
the 2 × 2 block. When that happens, the target block contains
908
Fig. 17. RAPSDs for the images in Fig. 16. From top to bottom,
g = 18 , 14 , 12 , 34 , 78 . The RAPSD for the halftone image of 12 g from error
diffusion is plotted as blue dashed curve in each sub-figure. The symbol
 indicates the blue noise principal frequency. (a) Hou and Tu [42] 2004.
(b) Liu et al. [8] 2012. (c) AbS.
one or two white pixels. Since the error is accumulated large
enough, one observes consecutive blocks with white pixels.
This produces a jump from all-black blocks to blocks with
white pixels, hence the observed line artifacts. This line artifact
is less visible when g is large. In addition, it is almost invisible
when applied to natural image.
The RAPSDs are plotted in Fig. 17. The first column
corresponds to Hou’s algorithm. One may notice the peaks
in RAPSD that are located at lower frequency than the blue
noise principal frequency. These peaks corresponds to the low
frequency periodic patterns on the target image (See the first
column of Fig. 16). Such peaks disappear in Hou’s RAPSD,
since the the periodic patterns are broken by the stochastic
mapping. However, we may observe that the RAPSD in low
frequency range is larger than those in Hou’s algorithm.
Compared to Hou’s algorithm and Liu’s algorithm, the pro-
posed AbS algorithm produces the lowest RAPSDs in low
radial frequency band. For example, the RAPSDs are almost
zeros for f ρ < 0.1, irrespective of the gray level g. Since
the low frequency region is where the HVS is sensitive to,
the AbS algorithm leaves the least amount of noise in this
region, compared to Hou’s algorithm and Liu’s algorithm. This
conclusion can be further verified by the residual variance.
The result for the residual variance is shown in Fig. 18.
In Fig. 18(a), the average values of the target images are plot-
ted. They are exactly half of the input gray levels, reflecting
the loss of contrast from VC encoding. Using 12 g as reference,
we calculate the noise and its power, i.e., the residual variance.
The result is shown in Fig. 18(b). Obviously, halftone image
has the lowest residual variance since no modification from
VC encoding is imposed. The AbS algorithm has the lowest
residual variance among the three algorithms. Furthermore,
the residual variance for AbS is low and stable for different
gray level g. Recall that in our AbS-based probabilistic VC,
the residual variance increases with g, see Fig. 8.
3) Test of Fidelity: Fidelity is tested on natural images,
including the typical Lena image and the Kodak database.
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON IMAGE PROCESSING, VOL. 28, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2019
Fig. 18. Residual variance for Hou and Tu [42] 2004, Liu et al. [8] 2012,
AbS and Halftone. (a) Average gray level of the target image after Gaussian
smoothing. The results for Hou 2004 and Liu 2012 are overlapped by the
result of AbS. (b) Residual variance.
Fig. 19. The result of AbS-based vector VC on the Lena image. (a) The
original image. (b) Share 1. (c) Share 2. (d) The target image.
The test result on the Lena image is shown in Fig. 19,
including the original Lena image, the shares and the target
images.
The reconstructed Lena images from the competing algo-
rithms are shown in Fig. 20. We also include Lee’s algorithm
into this comparison [18]. The size of the blocks are 2 × 2
for all the four algorithms. The halftone Lena image is also
plotted in Fig. 20(f).
The first row presents Hou’s algorithm and Liu’s algorithm.
Clearly, in Hou’s result, the area above the hat and blow
the face contains periodic patterns. This can be understood
by checking the halftone image. From the halftone image
(See Fig. 10(d)), the region above the hat and the region
below the face correspond to gray levels near 128. Hence
on the halftone image, periodic patterns are produced. These
periodic patterns are then mapped to the target image due to
the deterministic mapping in Hou’s algorithm.
Lee’s algorithm produces better global contrast than Hou’s
algorithm and Liu’s algorithm, due to the implicit equalization
from the local block mapping. For the Lena image, since the
histogram is symmetric, Lee uses the mapping as in Table I.
As a result, the blocks without white pixel and the blocks
with one white pixel are all mapped to blocks without white
pixel. This helps to stretch the histogram of the corresponding
YAN et al.: IMPROVING THE VISUAL QUALITY OF SIZE-INVARIANT VC FOR GRAYSCALE IMAGES: AbS APPROACH
Fig. 20. Comparing different vector VCs. (a) Hou’s algorithm [42],
(b) Liu’s algorithm [8], (c) Lee’s algorithm [18], (d) AbS with affine gamut
mapping G A , (e) AbS with nonlinear gamut mapping G N , (f) Halftone
1 J [n].
image of 2 stable than the AbS-based probabilistic VC across different
grayscale image (i.e., after inverse halftoning) to the left end.
Similarly, the histogram is also stretched to the right end, thus
producing implicit equalization. However, this block mapping
is global and lossy, which leads to loss of local contrast
and image details, and such loss is not compensated by their
adjacent blocks. For example, in Lena image, the gray level of
the mirror frame and some details of the hair are lost. The loss
of contrast is also reflected by the bad HPSNR performance
that will be presented below.
The target image using the proposed AbS algorithm with
affine gamut mapping (AbS(G A )) is shown in Fig. 20(d).
Visual inspection reveals that this image is the closest to the
halftone image in Fig. 20(f), thus having the best fidelity. This
is due to the linear mapping G A : x [n] = 12 J [n] that preserves
the relative contrast between adjacent gray levels. We also
plot the result using the AbS algorithm with nonlinear gamut
mapping in Fig. 20(e). When AbS(G N ) is compared with Lee’s
algorithm, it produces not only similar global contrast, but
also better local contrast, thanks to the explicit equalization
G E in G N . The lost details from Lee’s algorithm, such as the
gray level of the mirror frame and details of the hair, are now
recovered using AbS(G N ). Thus, depending on the application
scenario, if fidelity with the original secret is more important,
909
Fig. 21. Comparing four vector VC algorithms on the Kodak database,
including Hou and Tu [42] 2004, Liu et al. [8] 2012, Lee et al. [18] 2014
and AbS. (a) HPSNR. (b) MSSIM.
then AbS(G A ) is better than the competing algorithms; if the
global contrast also needs to be improved, then AbS(G N ) is
better than the competing algorithms.
In addition to subjective evaluation of visual quality, we also
use HPSNR and MSSIM to measure the perceptual quality.
The next experiment is done on Kodak image database. Each
image in the database is encoded and stacked using the
competing algorithms. Then the HPSNR and MSSIM are
calculated between the reference image and the target image.
Considering the loss of global contrast from VC encoding and
stacking (See Fig. 18(a)), the reference image is chosen as
J R [n] = 12 J [n]. For fair comparison with Hou’s algorithm
and Liu’s algorithm, the reference image is not equalized.
The experimental results are plotted in Fig. 21. Several
observations can be made. First, the AbS vector VC produces
target image with the highest HPSNR and MSSIM among the
four competing algorithms. In addition, the MSSIM is more
secret images (see Fig. 12). The reason is that, different
gray levels in the secret image are better reproduced by the
AbS-based vector VC. This can be understood from comparing
the RAPSD and residual variance. For the RAPSD results
in Fig. 7(a) and Fig. 17(c), the AbS-based vector VC produces
near zero RAPSD in low radial frequencies for all the five
gray levels, while AbS-based probabilistic VC produces higher
RAPSD in low radial frequencies for gray levels 34 and 78 .
From the plots of residual variance in Fig. 8 and Fig. 18(b),
we see that all the gray levels have low and stable residual vari-
ances from AbS-based vector VC, while the residual variance
increases with the gray level in AbS-based probabilistic VC.
To explain these observations further, we note that:
• For AbS-based probabilistic VC, each secret pixel is
encoded independently. Each white pixel in the secret
image has 50% chances to be flipped to black on the
target image due to VC encryption. For example, let’s
consider a small 2 × 2 block. If after quantization, all
of the four pixels are white, then there is a probability
 1 4
2 = 16
1
that the four pixels will be black on the target
image. This cluster of black pixels not only introduces
black clusters on target image, but also forces the error
diffusion process to produce more white pixels at the
quantizer output, thus producing white clusters on target
910
image. These clusters lead to the large residual variance
and large RAPSD at low radial frequencies.
• For AbS-based vector VC, such as the one using the
mapping in Table I, we can guarantee the number of black
pixels on the target image, depending on the number of
white pixels on the secret image. For example, if the
secret image block has 4 white pixels, i.e., B(y) = 4,
then after VC encoding and stacking, there are only two
black pixels on the target block, i.e. B(ŷ) = 2 (See the
first row of Table I). The probability of seeing four black
pixels in this small block is zero on target image. Thus,
we can be sure that on a local 2 × 2 block, the input gray
level (after gamut mapping) is within the output gamut.
So, the black pixels are more evenly distributed, thus pro-
ducing more stable residual variance across different gray
levels, and producing near zero RAPSD for low radial
frequencies.
Second, Hou’s algorithm and Liu’s algorithm produce sim-
ilar results. Third, Lee’s algorithm produces better MSSIM
than Hou’s algorithm and Liu’s algorithm, but worse HPSNR.
This is due to the implicit equalization in Lee’s algorithm
which affects the intensity of the target image. Since HPSNR
measures tone similarity, any change of intensity may decrease
HPSNR. On the contrary, MSSIM also reflects the correlation
between the reference image and the target image, hence is less
affected by equalization. We also include HPSNR and MSSIM
between the reference image and its halftone image. Since
there is no modification due to VC encoding and stacking, each
secret block is perfectly reconstructed on the halftone image.
This result serves as an upper bound for all VC algorithms
based on the same halftoning method. One may observe that,
for images with complicated contents, such as images No. 5,
No. 8 and No. 13, the HPSNRs produced by AbS are very
close to those from the halftone images.
Finally, we note that, all of the four algorithms involved
in this section have linear complexity O(M N). When AbS is
compared to Lee’s algorithm (the closely relevant one to AbS),
the block error diffusion in AbS has the same complexity as
the pixel-based error diffusion in Lee’s algorithm. The AbS
algorithm needs gamut mapping and simulated stacking for
each block. So, totally 2M N more multiplications are needed
for AbS. Since this is linear in M N, it results only slight
increase in time complexity. On the Lena image, the machine
time for Lee’s algorithm is 4.54 seconds, and the machine time
for AbS is 5.41 seconds.
V. C ONCLUSION
Aiming at improving the visual quality of the recon-
structed secret image (i.e., target image) in size-invariant visual
cryptography, we propose an AbS framework to push the
reconstruction error to high-frequency band. This framework
is flexible in that it can be used in any (n, n)-threshold
VC algorithm to improve the visual quality, without sac-
rificing security. Based on the AbS framework, two algo-
rithms are designed, including AbS-based probabilistic VC and
AbS-based vector VC. We introduce the measure RAPSD that
is traditionally used for evaluating the quality of halftone
image to characterize the quality of target image. A new
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON IMAGE PROCESSING, VOL. 28, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2019
measure, the residual variance, is also designed to further
characterize the level of noise relevant to the HVS.
The AbS framework can successfully push the noise on
the target image to high frequency bands. Among the two
AbS algorithms, the AbS vector VC produces almost zero
DC component on RAPSD. Its residual variance is also
the lowest amongst the competing algorithms. In terms of
the fidelity of the target image, the vector VC consistently
outperforms the existing algorithms.
One limitation of the current work is that it is limited to
error diffusion framework. Possible future works include the
elaboration of a DBS-like algorithm to solve the optimiza-
tion problem in (4) directly. For the ordered dithering based
halftoning algorithm, if the dither pattern is made adaptive
to the stacking results from neighboring blocks, then it may
possible to design AbS based VC for ordered dithering.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
We would like to thank the editor and the anonymous
reviewers for their valuable suggestions and comments.
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Bin Yan (M’15) received the Ph.D. degree in
electrical engineering from the Harbin Institute of
Technology, China, in 2007. From 1996 to 1999, he
was an Engineer with the Goma Company Group.
From 2007 to 2012, he was a Lecturer with the
Shandong University of Science and Technology.
From 2015 to 2016, he was a Visiting Scholar with
Deakin University, Australia. Since 2013, he has
been an Associate Professor with the College of
Electronics, Communication and Physics, Shandong
University of Science and Technology. His research
interests include multimedia signal processing, multimedia security, statistical
signal processing, and data forensic.
Yong Xiang (SM’12) received the Ph.D. degree
in electrical and electronic engineering from The
University of Melbourne, Australia. He is currently
a Professor and the Director of the Artificial Intel-
ligence and Image Processing Research Cluster,
School of Information Technology, Deakin Univer-
sity, Australia. He has published four monographs,
over 100 refereed journal articles, and numerous
conference papers in these areas. His research inter-
ests include information security and privacy, signal
and image processing, data analytics and machine
intelligence, Internet of Things, and blockchain. He has served as a program
chair, a TPC chair, a symposium chair, and a session chair for a number
of international conferences. He is an Associate Editor of the IEEE S IGNAL
P ROCESSING L ETTERS and the IEEE A CCESS .
Guang Hua (S’12–M’13) received the B.Eng.
degree in communication engineering from Wuhan
University, China, in 2009, and the M.Sc. degree in
signal processing and the Ph.D. degree in informa-
tion engineering from Nanyang Technological Uni-
versity, Singapore, in 2010 and 2014, respectively.
From 2013 to 2015, he was a Research Scientist with
the Department of Cyber Security and Intelligence,
Institute for Infocomm Research, Singapore. After
that, he joined the School of Electrical and Elec-
tronic Engineering, Nanyang Technological Univer-
sity, as a Research Fellow, until 2017. He is currently with the School of
Electronic Information, Wuhan University. His research interests include mul-
timedia forensics and security, applied convex optimization, applied machine
learning, and general signal processing topics.