A secret image sharing scheme with steganography lacks to provide the authentication, quality of stego-image and more cheating done by the dishonest participants. So, a secret image sharing using shared image technique is proposed to prevent the participants from the subsidiary stipulation of a false stego-image (an image containing the hidden secret image). A secret image is first processed into n shares which are then hidden in n user-selected suppression images. It is recommended to select these suppression images to contain well-known stuffing to increase the steganographic effect for the security protection. Additionally, an image watermarking technique is engaged to embed fragile watermark signals into the suppression images by the use of parity-bit checking, thus providing the ability of authenticating the reliability of each processed suppression image. During the secret image recovery process, each stego-image carry by a participant is first verified for its reliability by checking the uniformity of the parity conditions found in the image pixels. This facilitates to avert the participant from subsidiary stipulation of a false stego-image. Some effective techniques for handling large images as well as for enhancing security protection are employed. As a result, the secret image sharing using shared image scheme offers a high secure and effective mechanism for secret image sharing that is not found in existing secret image sharing methods. High-class experimental results proving the authentication capability, secret hiding effectiveness and quality of the proposed approach are included.

Secret image sharing Steganography Authentication suppression image Data hiding Stego-image Fragile watermarking.