Progressive Reconstruction on Region-Based Secret Image Sharing

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comment: 

This paper introduces a new region-based (k,n) PSIS scheme, which ensures that all regions have progressive reconstruction characteristics compared to previous PSIS schemes. The scheme divides a secret image into multiple regions, and the minimum reconstruction threshold for all regions is equal so that these regions satisfy the (k, n) progressive reconstruction model. Additionally, the paper verifies that the proposed scheme satisfies the (k, n) progressive reconstruction model with formulas and experiments.

The paper elaborates on a novel region-based progressive secret image sharing (PSIS) scheme, which divides the image into regions of varying importance levels, allowing for gradual reconstruction based on the significance of each region. The clear structure and detailed experimental design, along with a thorough analysis of experimental results and data, effectively demonstrate the superiority of the proposed scheme.

However, there are some issues in the paper that need to be addressed:

1. The abstract section needs to be improved, and the experimental results should be pointed out in the abstract.

2. In the experimental section, it could be better to explain the selection criteria for n.

The quality of English expression is good, and I hope to further improve its logical coherence.

Author Response

Dear editor and reviewer:

Dear editor and reviewers:

Thank you for your letter and the reviewers’ comments concerning my manuscript entitled “Progressive reconstruction on region-based secret image”. Those comments are all valuable and very helpful in revising and improving my paper, as well as the important guiding significance to our researches. The responses of the comment are shown in the attached file.

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The paper presents a nivel region-based (k,n) PSIS solution guaranteeing progressive reconstruction and allowing proportional reovery of information based on the importance of each region. The paper is interesting and can be useful for image protection solutions. However, there are several aspects that need to be improved:

- In general, there are several English grammatical errors that need to be corrected in the whole text, specially in section 1 and 2.

- The Introduction sections contains too many details about the SoTA; in fact, the same 15 references have been included on the Introduction and the SoTA section. This section needs rewritten to contextualize the need of the research, the applicability (to understand its need) and the specific objective to cover.. The details about the soTA should be kept at section 2.

- It is not clear if algotihm 3.2 is a novelty from the authors or from the soTA.

- The paper contains 4 citations from the same authors (reference 1, 13, 14 and 15). I would like to understand the main differences of this approach in comparison to those gathered in these references...  I miss this information in the paper, as I guess this is probably an evolution of previous ones, or a new application...  (it is a pity that I can only access the abstract of the mentioned publications).

- I miss some information about the use of this kind of algorithms in real-life. Are they usually used? In what scenarios? By this way, its applicability is better understood.

As a summary, the paper is interesting but I miss more details about its applicability in real-use cases, the difference with previous research works (they are mentioned in the introduction and SoTA section, but they are not comapred at all...). In addition, some parts of the papers needs improvements, specially the introduction section.

The English grammar needs improvements. There are some errors that need to be solved. For example:

- Line 15: ...in such A way...

- Line 17: ...to ACHIEVE...

- Line 22: ... is significANT...

And so on... A complete revision of the English language is needed.

Author Response

Dear editor and reviewers:

Thank you for your letter and the reviewers’ comments concerning my manuscript entitled “Progressive reconstruction on region-based secret image”. Those comments are all valuable and very helpful in revising and improving my paper, as well as the important guiding significance to our researches. The responses of the comment are shown below.

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Thabk you for the updated version. However, the provided comments still apply:

- There are still some grammatical errors in the text.

- The introduction ha been improved. However, it still includes several soTA information. Besides, it probably provides too technical details that avoid to clearly understand the purpose and the reason of this research... I think that more rewriting is needed.

- Contributions are now more clear. 

- Regarding the additional cites from the same authors... I understand that they provide different approaches but I think it is imporant to understand the main differences with them and how this approach overcomes the existing ones (not just mention them). 

- Regarding the potential application of the proposed methodology in real-life, I think the idea behind the authors' answer is useful and should be included in the paper... why its application is not possible yet?

As mentioned before, I think the paper is interesting. However, the comments should me better considered.

Moderate editing of English language required

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 3

Reviewer 2 Report

Thank you for the updates. I think the paper has been improved. However, I think that the introduction is still too technical (the contents have not been modified so much.. just some references have been moved). I think you should provide no so technical details in the introduction.

In addition, I cannot see any update in section 3.1 related to the differences in reference to the previous work (as commented on the cover letter). I only see the updated in section 4, justifying the improvement over previous works.

The rest of the comments have already been covered.

Moderate editing of English language is still required

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf