Sharing multiple secrets in digital images

The share of multiple secrets among participants in secret transmission is a critical topic for a new digital image scheme. The new scheme is derived from the least significant bit substitution method and the visual cryptography method. Given some secrets and a set of cover images, the proposed scheme will convert the secrets into many bit planes and modify the cover images based on these bit planes. In our method, each participant has a unique modified cover image called a stego-image. A pair of participants can therefore reconstruct a unique secret without destroying of its secrecy. Experiments shown that the quality of all stego-images is visually acceptable. The proposed scheme also prevents anyone who possesses only one stego-image from gaining information about the secret and the other stego-image. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved.