Reversible Data Hiding in Encrypted Images Based on Chinese Remainder Theorem and Secret Sharing Mechanism

Secret sharing refers to a method for dividing a secret into several shares and distributing them among a series of participants. When enough shares are received, the secret can be reconstructed without information loss. This paper proposes a new method for reversible data hiding in encrypted images based on the Chinese remainder theorem (CRT) and secret sharing strategy. The most significant bit (MSB) and 7 least significant bit (LSB) layers are separately encrypted during the encryption procedure, in which 7 LSB layers are scrambled with a CRT secret sharing scheme. During the embedding phase, the additional bits are embedded into each share based on the strategies of MSB flipping and MSB substitution. The receiver side can recover the original image and extract the additional bits according to the characteristics of secret sharing and strong correlation between adjacent pixels. Experimental results have demonstrated the effectiveness of the proposed method.