Improved schemes for visual secret sharing based on random grids

Random grid (RG) is an alternative approach to realize a visual secret sharing (VSS) scheme. RG-based VSS has merits such as no pixel expansion and no tailor-made matrix requirement. Recently, many investigations on RG-based VSS are made. However, they need further improvements. In this paper, we obtain some improvements on RG-based VSS. Actually, two improved schemes are proposed, namely RG-based VSS for general access structure (GAS) with improved contrast and extended RG-based VSS with improved access structure. The first scheme can achieve better contrast than previous schemes. The second scheme reduces the chance of suspicion on secret image encryption by generating meaningful shares instead of noise-like shares in the first scheme, and improves the access structure from (k, k) to GAS while maintaining the property that the contrast of the recovered image is traded with that of share images by setting a certain parameter from small to large. Finally, theoretical analyses and experimental results are provided to demonstrate the effectiveness and advantages of the proposed schemes.