The (k, n)-threshold secret image sharing scheme is an image protection method, whose security comes partly from precise mathematical calculations, and even a little change in shadow images will lead to a false recovered image. Thus, it is crucial to recover the secret image information in the presence of possible noise on shadow images, which has rarely been considered in previous work. In this paper, a robust (k, n)-threshold polynomial-based secret image sharing scheme(RPSIS) against noise on shadow images is proposed, which depends on the randomness of the sharing phase without any other techniques, such as steganography. Additionally, pixel expansion caused by the direct application of error correction codes is avoided. Experimental results and theoretical proof confirm the effectiveness of our scheme. The shadow images of the scheme are of the same size as secret image and the security of the scheme is also maintained with no information leakage. Even though the shadow images are modified by noise, the original secret image can be reconstructed without loss under the error correction capability, which provides more possibilities for the practical application of secret image sharing.

The $(k,n)$-threshold Secret Image Sharing scheme (SISS) is a solution to image protection. However, the shadow images generated by traditional SISS are noise-like, easily arousing deep suspicions, so that it is significant to generate meaningful shadow images. One solution is to embed the shadow images into meaningful natural images and visual quality should be considered first. Limited by embedding rate, the existing schemes have made concessions in size and visual quality of shadow images, and few of them take the ability of anti-steganalysis into consideration. In this paper, a meaningful SISS that is based on Natural Steganography (MSISS-NS) is proposed. The secret image is firstly divided into n small-sized shadow images with Chinese Reminder Theorem, which are then embedded into RAW images to simulate the images with higher $ISO$ parameters with NS. In MSISS-NS, the visual quality of shadow images is improved significantly. Additionally, as the payload of cover images with NS is larger than the size of small-sized shadow images, the scheme performs well not only in visual camouflage, but also in other aspects, like lossless recovery, no pixel expansion, and resisting steganalysis.

Compared with Shamir’s original secret image sharing (SIS), the Chinese-remainder-theorem-based SIS (CRTSIS) generally has the advantages of a lower computation complexity, lossless recovery and no auxiliary encryption. However, general CRTSIS is neither perfect nor ideal, resulting in a narrower range of share pixels than that of secret pixels. In this paper, we propose a practical and lossless CRTSIS based on Asmuth and Bloom’s threshold algorithm. To adapt the original scheme for grayscale images, our scheme shares the high seven bits of each pixel and utilizes the least significant bit (LSB) matching technique to embed the LSBs into the random integer that is generated in the sharing phase. The chosen moduli are all greater than 255 and the share pixels are in the range of [0, 255] by a screening operation. The generated share pixel values are evenly distributed in the range of [0, 255] and the selection of $(k,n)$ threshold is much more flexible, which significantly improves the practicality of CRTSIS. Since color images in RGB mode are made up of three channels, it is easy to extend the scheme to color images. Theoretical analysis and experiments are given to validate the effectiveness of the proposed scheme.

In some particular scenes, the shadows need to be given different weights to represent the participants’ status or importance. And during the reconstruction, participants with different weights obtain various quality reconstructed images. However, the existing schemes based on visual secret sharing (VSS) and the Chinese remainder theorem (CRT) have some disadvantages. In this paper, we propose a weighted polynomial-based SIS scheme in the field of GF (257). We use threshold polynomial-based secret image sharing (SIS) to generate shares and assign them corresponding weights. Then, the remaining shares are randomly filled with invalid value 0 or 255. When the threshold is satisfied, the number and weight of share can affect the reconstructed image’s quality. Our proposed scheme has the property of lossless recovery. And the average light transmission of shares in our scheme is identical. Experiments and theoretical analysis show that the proposed scheme is practical and feasible. Besides, the quality of the reconstructed image is consistent with the theoretical derivation.