An error resilient image camouflaging scheme for secret image transmission

In this study, an error resilient image camouflaging scheme for secret image transmission is proposed. In the proposed scheme, at the sender, a secret image is camouflaged into multiple virtual JPEG-2000 images, resulting in multiple cipher-images. Then instead of the secret image, the cipherimages are transmitted to the receiver only. Because both the secret and cipher-images are significant, the cipher-images will not pique the interest of illegal users who may try to get the secret image. At the receiver, if all the cipher-images are completely received, the secret image can be recovered from the cipher-images, whereas if the cipher-images are not completely received, the secret image cannot be recovered. Additionally, because the transmitted JPEG-2000 cipherimages may be corrupted by transmission errors, to enhance the degree of transmission reliability, three proposed techniques, namely, side-match vector quantization, roundrobin like data embedding, and duplicate data embedding, are employed to provide error resilience for robust image transmission.